Dorian in Africa

I'm Alive

2010-10-29T10:56:00.002Z

Sorry I should not have left the blog for so long, especially with such an angsty post as the last entry.

Everything is fine. I am COSing December 3. I have written a lot more blogs since June but I don't have them with me so can't post them now, but will do before I leave for good.

Things are not going well in Guinea right now, for those of you concerned about it. Ethnic violence and a whispered threat of an impending civil war. Not good. But Mali is doing just fine.

Awful Stuff

2010-06-28T22:31:00.002Z

So I'm not going to blame it on being a second year volunteer that has had to do two first years but at the same time I AM. It sucks. I mean, you've really gotta have some stones to do evac with transfer. You REALLY do. It's no joke.

So anyway. I mean yeah I've been having problems trying to adjust here. Trying to do my second first year faster than my first first year so that I can actually get stuff done. In a village whose language I don't speak so most of what I do is...nevermind. That's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is that I killed a dog. It wasn't me, really, but I was in the car. I was on my way back to site to do the geophysical study for the pump I want to put in at the school (which is actually going to happen tomorrow, inshallah). We were going through Kati. A ways down the road, I saw a dog and I passively thought, hope that dog gets out of the road! Dogs should never be in the road because they'll get squished. People here aren't exactly careful drivers. But it was so far ahead of us that I didn't really give it a second thought.

A few moments later, I saw a moto coming up next to us going the other way and our car swerved a bit towards it to avoid a bashee on the right and then I felt our car make a break. And then a bump. For a fleeting moment I thought it was a speed bump. But then I heard this awful screaming under my feet and then another bump on the back driver's side tire. I stopped breathing.

I told myself not to, but I looked back. What I saw was a dog on it's side in the middle of the road, it's legs jerking in the air, spasming like it was having a seizure. We had run it over with both our front and back tires. I immediately looked back in front of us. Neither of the people in the front made any kind of reaction. I dug my fingers into the heel of my hand willing myself not to look back again. And I didn't.

But now I desperately want to know if the dog DIED. I mean...it's one thing to hit an animal and it's another to let it torment to death rather than just kill it. SLIT IT'S THROAT...that's how they kill feed animals, so why not roadkill?

In my fantasy someone who was there on the side of the road went out there and put the poor thing out of its misery. But I don't know if that's true.

In Guinea I was in a taxi and saw a moto hit a cow. It threw the moto and the guy driving it across the asphalt. But the cow laid there in the road, on it's side, mooing weakly. Our taxi stopped to help. The guy was ok. His moto was scratched up. Two other cows came out onto the road and bent their heads down to the wounded cow and mooed at it. It mooed back. They walked away.

The guy who had hit it with the moto borrowed a knife from someone in the taxi and went out and slit the poor thing's throat. I was in the taxi the whole time. I was trying not to look. I was trying to concentrate on breathing. But it was a RELIEF that the cow was put out of it's misery so quickly.

I don't know what happened to the dog. When I drove back on the same route the next day he wasn't in the road and I didn't see him on the side of the road, but he could have been dragged off anywhere. I just can't stand the idea of a defenseless animal suffering. If it's going to die, kill it quick, don't leave it there whimpering.

Do not make the mistake of thinking this kind of thing is rare. The other day my host brother brought a sheep back on the back of a bicycle saying it had been killed by a car in the road. They gutted it and everyone had mutton for dinner. I do not know how long it suffered.

Another time I was in the Peace Corps bus and we found a sheep on the side of the road who looked like it had fallen off the top of a bashee. One of it's eyes were hanging out and it could not stand up. They put it on the top of the bus where it flailed around with every turn and bump for hours until I finally got out of the bus. Later on, people ate it for dinner at Tubaniso. I was not among them.

These are not all the stories I have witnessed.

In the end it is just the cycle of life. I just wish it didn't have to include such suffering. But like much else here...there is nothing you can do. Unless you're willing to insist the vehicle you are in stop. And take that knife in your hand yourself.

I can't do it...can you?

Latrine Project, Day 10

2010-06-03T22:35:00.000Z

Wow. Have we really been at this for 10 days already??

Today we finally started putting bricks in the hole. The Brothers Bagayogo did pretty much all the work today because it was considered skilled labor, other than getting water, using donkey carts to bring the bricks to the school from the pump, mixing cement, handing bricks and tools down into the hole, etc… We did seven layers of bricks and are probably three layers from the top of the hole. Or maybe two, depending on how they are going to do the top slab. So tomorrow should see the end of interior bricks, Saturday should be top slab day and Sunday maybe we will start building the exterior structure. I’m not really sure how it’s going to work. I have to leave on Monday to go to COS Conference and it is going to take quite a leap of faith to trust that all will be accomplished sans problem while I am gone. But, Inshallah, by the time I get back, the whole thing will be complete.

Today we worked until it was practically dark. By that time only three of the workers remained. They usually knock off about 3pm (it was 7:30 by the time we finished up). I gave the people who stuck it out the last of my gum.

On the pump project front, Haoua talked to the geophysical study guy and he agreed to do the study even though I won’t have the money to pay him for another couple of weeks. He is going to do it Tuesday or Wednesday. I am going to close the latrine project and open the pump project with SPA on Monday. If there is still SPA money, hopefully Karim will let me know if it is approved before the end of the week. Then I can ask Adama to see if the pump diggers will dig the pump on credit and get paid at the beginning of July. I hope the publishing of the geophysical study doesn’t take much time. And I hope the pump diggers have an open schedule at the end of this month. A lot of factors are going to have to come into harmony next week in order for this pump project to succeed. I really hope it does because I have so many other projects that are hinging on this pump!

So here’s hoping.

Murphy's Law

2010-05-30T22:34:00.000Z

So. After the first day, which went SO well, no one showed up for the next two days. I was livid. I was like – money doesn’t grow on trees! I have to pay these Brothers Bagayogo by the day and I don’t have a lot of leeway funding-wise. Plus, it’s a waste of their time!

I was on the phone with Adama like every day. And I was like, I don’t know what to do. They don’t show up. I don’t speak Bambara so I can’t talk to Daouda or the village chief and I can BARELY even speak to the Bagayogos because the one doesn’t really speak French at all and the other one speaks a little more French than I do Bambara. One of the days, my homologue Drissa didn’t even show up. I was SO pissed. I was ranting about how if the village doesn’t want to work for the latrines, we will just pack these bricks into a sotrama and take them to Bamako and build something at Tubaniso. I was like, “it’s not me that has to live here for the rest of my life!!”

So Adama, bless his heart, is doing everything he can, calling people, explaining things, even on his day off. Adama is a top notch employee and Peace Corps would be in a sorry state if they ever happen to lose him.

So people didn’t show up Thursday for a variety of reasons the most compelling of which being that there was a death in the village. Another one, I mean. And this time the guy had actually died IN Tenezana. In his bed. So everyone was over there. I mean, anybody who was anybody was over there. It was at least 300 people or more. I went with the ladies who were still mourning at my neighbor’s house. We sat and a woman who appeared to be maybe the man’s daughter was crying (not wailing, but crying openly). He was an old man and died of something like old age. It was so crowded. But being the white lady, they gave me a chair. After a little while, they told me to stand up so I did. Everybody was standing up. And then about 5-6 men came out of the house carrying the body. It was wrapped in a white sheet and then rolled in a grass mat. They took it away to bury it somewhere. I don’t know where but they weren’t gone very long at all. I was like, “please tell me this burial site is a proper distance from the wells…”

So anyway. That’s why people didn’t show up on Thursday. Friday no one showed up either. I imagine this was partly because it was market day in Yelekebougou but also because they were still supposed to be mourning the deceased man but I have to walk by that house to get to the school and there was nobody there on Friday so I was kind of unwilling to take that as an excuse.

So anyway I was crying (not literally) about it to Adama on the phone so he was putting calls in to my host dad and my supervisor to talk to the village chief. This was the day Drissa didn’t show up either, and didn’t call or anything. So just as the Brothers Bagayogo and I are leaving the school to go talk to Daouda (my supervisor), the village chief rides up on his bike. The Brothers Bagayogo talk to him. He says people didn’t come because of the death and that they are villageois, it’s not like a city, and that we will have lots of workers tomorrow. I had to bite my tongue because I wanted to be like, “look if people aren’t going to show up due to a death or for ANY reason, they could at least send someone to TELL us, so that we aren’t sitting there stewing, wasting time.” But I just thanked him and went home.

On Saturday nobody showed up. I was SO PISSED. I told the Bagayogos if it happened again the next day, they could just go back to Bamako.

But then we went to the school and by some miracle people started tricking in (we had been at the pump where we were making bricks). Maybe they had been waiting until they saw us at the school, not realizing we were waiting at the pump. But all in all, there ended up being about 20-25 guys and they started digging the hole. I was like PRAISE ALLAH.

Again, everyone seemed in good spirits all day, working away. The Brothers Bagayogo made the tea, since digging a hole isn’t really specialized labor.

I had sent Drissa off to Kati early that morning to get the other mold, which Scotty had brought to her house from Bamako (thanks Scotty!). We were expecting him back early, like by 9 at the latest, because the Bagayogo in charge of bricks wanted to start making the exterior bricks that day. Yeah. Drissa didn’t show up until like almost 2pm. I was LIVID. And then when he got there, the insert to the mold didn’t fit. It was too small. This time I was like, “Adama!!” since it was Adama who had sent us the mold.

But they said they could fix it if they pounded the edges a bit to make it wider and that’s just what they did this morning when we started making the exterior bricks.

Today there were two groups of workers. There were about 20 guys at the pump, making bricks. Then there were about 12 people at the school, digging the hole. Apparently they had split up the work as such: everyone who lives on the same side of the road as the school would send their family member to dig the hole. Everyone who lived on the same side as the pump would send their family member to do bricks. In this way, the work was split up. Today I knew almost everyone who was digging the hole, because they were my neighbors. Some of them were even the chefs du famille! I think that just meant that they don’t have any sons of age or a younger brother to send. Yusuf sent his younger brother. Moussa (my host dad) sent his oldest son, Soumaila, who lives here. The guy who speaks Pular was there and the guy who lives in the same compound as him (I think they are brothers?). A couple of other guys I recognized, because they live near me. In fact this was the first group of workers I recognized ANYBODY in.

So after two full days of working on the hole it is only half the depth it needs to be, which leads to there being two more days of digging before the hole can start having bricks put in it.

Almost all the bricks are done but we ran out of sand so more is being delivered in the morning and they’ll make the rest of the bricks and hopefully start making the slab.

Today as we were doing bricks, a pickup truck pulled up and an African and a Chinese guy hopped out and started giving all my workers tree seedlings. There were two kinds. One is Eucalyptus and the other had a compound leaf which means it is nitrogen fixing (good for the soil). I’m not sure what the whole deal was but I think that this Chinese guy must work for some project that has a tree nursery with good agroforestry trees and when the seedlings get big at the beginning of the rainy season they go hand them out to people who then plant them. Hey – free tree! The dudes were pretty excited about it, I can tell you that much.

I got two eucalyptus trees for my family. Tomorrow I have to make sure they planted them.

So, barring any other incidents like our two day hiccup, I think things will move along swiftly at this point. I hope VERY swiftly, because I have to leave for COS conference (not my real one, it’s several months early to be mine, but since we won’t be getting one as transfers, we were invited to attend HBO’s COS conference, which is nice) in like a week from tomorrow. I really hate the idea of not being here to make sure everything is completed satisfactorily but at the same time I really don’t want to miss COS conference. Not only because it is at a nice hotel but also because there are lots of sessions I would really like to attend and this will be my only chance.

So, inshallah, we will be far enough along by the time I have to leave that I won’t need to worry. Inshallah.

Latrine Project Begins

2010-05-26T22:27:00.000Z

So we started the latrine project today in earnest. Yay! They said they were going to start at 8am but I know Africa time so I finished reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and then went over there about nine. To my delighted surprise, they were already there working!

I was expecting disaster. Because, as with making movies, God also does not want your funded project to succeed (right, Rory?). I was expecting none of the villager workers to have shown up. I was expecting…I don’t know. Disaster. But that didn’t happen at all! The village workers were all there (I didn’t know any of them, either) and they had already laid out several sand piles and were mixing the cement into the first one. Within the first few minutes, they made the first brick!!

There were about 20 workers in all. They were all in pretty high spirits. Of course, right when I got there they told me they needed tea, so I sent Drissa to the boutique to get tea and sugar and there was one guy whose job it was to make tea all day. I told him to get them cookies too so they all had a biscuit snack as well. It cost me just under 1 mille franc, which is like $2.

One thing you can say about Malians is they don’t mind a hard day of work! Nobody seemed to be disgruntled that they were there (each of them was ordered to come by their family chief, who was ordered to send somebody by the village chief). They were working out in the hot sun all day in the hottest part of the year doing manual labor with no shade. And yet they were laughing and joking and everybody was working.

I was really happy.

The best part was that around ten, about six of the unskilled workers, after observing the Bagayogo brothers (skilled labor) making the first set of bricks, took the second mold (somebody brought a second mold – from where I have no idea, but it was awesome because they could work a lot faster), went to the next pile, and started making bricks themselves. One of the Brothers Bagayogo helped them some until they got the hang of it, but after awhile, the six of them were making all their own bricks. They were elated and giggling when they started making them right all by themselves. When they would slide one out of the mold perfectly they’d let out a satisfied and kind of surprised laugh. By 11, all the bricks were being made by the villagers with only supervision from the Brothers Bagayogo. You know what we call that in Peace Corps? Capacity Building. And it’s the goal of every single Peace Corps project – DIFFERENCE MADE!

So as noon was rolling around I started to get nervous because the lunch wasn’t there. I was like, here’s the next part where this project can go belly up. What if no lunch comes??? But then a few minutes after noon, one woman walked up with a big bowl of toh on her head and dropped it off with me in the shade. I thanked her and she walked off again, and I started scanning the area for more women with bowls (one bowl would not be enough for 20+ men). None came. I was like shit!! But then Drissa took off on his bike and was gone for awhile. When he finally came back, about one or a little after, he had bundles of bowls with him (to send food traveling, they fill the bowl, put the cover on it, and then tie it up in a piece of cloth so it can be easily carried, even on a bike). I was like thank God! I guess it was Drissa’s family and neighbors who were in charge of food today.

But that’s when I noticed that I was turning as red as a lobster. I mean, granted, I had forgotten to put on sunscreen this morning, but I was sitting in the shade all day! I took care to not be in the sun. But it did not help. I was painfully aware that I had given myself a wicked sunburn. So I showed Drissa the difference between my shin and my calf and he was like yeah…you should go home and get out of the sun. I mean, they have no concept of sunburn. They don’t GET sunburn. They think it’s funny that my skin reacts to stuff that’s normal to them in strange ways (like my mango rash…or heat rash for that matter). So I don’t know if he understood when I was telling him that it was going to hurt later and that it comes from the SUN, not just heat, but at any rate I had to go home. Which was kind of disappointing for me because I would have liked to stay for the whole workday.

At the rate they were working, it seemed like they might even get all the interior bricks done that day. Which would mean heading to the school to start digging the hole tomorrow, since we are waiting on a different mold for the exterior bricks.

So I’ll head out again tomorrow – this time having sunscreened myself – and hopefully we’ll be breaking ground at the school!

As I was sitting there watching them make the bricks, I felt like I used to feel on the set of my films. I worked hard and did all the preproduction and now my crew was putting it into effect, with a sense of urgency, quality and a good attitude. I guess the only difference is that I don’t have anything to do. I just sit and watch. But I guess it’s because my job came before today and will end after the latrines are fully standing and I close the project and do the paperwork.

Like I say, I work with my head, not with my hands. That’s why they’re so soft and pretty ☺.

Up...then Down

2010-05-25T22:26:00.000Z

So as it turns out the guys Adama sent to supervise the latrine building showed up sometime during the night last night. So they were here this morning when I got up. This led to a meeting at the village chief’s house between us, Drissa, Daouda and my host dad Moussa, who is also a member of what is basically the PTA.

So after lots of talking in Bambara and a few calls to Adama, it was decided that each family in the village would be asked to send one member of the family to work as unskilled labor. And since we have over 60 families, this means they can work in shifts – 20 or 30 people this day, 20 or 30 others the next. Which is nice.

It was also decided that this work would actually begin tomorrow morning. But today we went out to the school and measured the spot where the latrines will go and dug a perimeter. So it’s actually starting!!

They said the only thing that appeared to be missing is that we might need to buy another half-order of sand, and Adama has to bring out another brick mold because apparently this is going to take two kinds of bricks. Way less of a disaster than I was expecting.

But I still don’t think we’ll be able to close the project in time to get the pump done. Which sucks.

So after what felt like a productive morning I came home and cleaned up my house. My cat had managed to bring down the plastic sheeting that covers my ceiling and with it all of the dust and mud clots that had been collecting in it. Drissa tied it all back up, and higher this time so my house looks bigger! But I had a lot of cleaning to do after that. Had lunch (Frijoles Mexicanas aux Villageois!). Started to take a nap but was then awoken by the two guys who came to supervise. Who apparently didn’t even want anything, just to sit around and eat mangoes.

But as I was up, my first mom Seli called me over and told me that our next door neighbor had died. The father of Setu, who used to do my laundry. He died in Bamako. According to Yusuf it wasn’t the family chief, but the family chief’s younger brother (it isn’t uncommon for several nuclear families to be living together in one big family – in fact it’s more the rule than the exception), but I don’t really know many men, mostly women and kids so I couldn’t picture who the guy was and probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. Yusuf said he died of diabetes. But I could have heard that wrong or he could have said the wrong thing.

So everybody was next door, sitting around real silent. Men in one area, women and kids in another. I didn’t know if I was supposed to go over or not but then one woman told me to go over so I did. And I just sat with everybody else, not saying anything.

Apparently the way it works is that Yusuf’s first wife Mamine, Yusuf’s younger brother (Wawa?), my second mom Abi, my host dad Moussa, Setu’s mother (Hawa? She’d also be one of the deceased’s wives, probably the first), and Alimatou (one of the women from the compound on the other side of theirs) went off to Bamako to take care of business. I guess there is a big cemetery in Bamako and that’s where they will inter him.

My first mom Seli and Sita are among a group who will cook at the mourners’ house tonight.

As I was sitting over there, more and more women would come by and sit. I recognized all of them from our club (our Tabaski clothes club that meets every Tuesday morning to give 100 FCFA apiece to save up for swanky clothes for Tabaski). Some of them are very close neighbors, others I’m not sure exactly which compounds are theirs. But it was actually a very beautiful display of community and support. Nothing to be said, just show the family you are there for them.

As it started getting later, I guess the word was spreading around the village and people I didn’t recognize started to show up. One woman I didn’t recognize walked into the compound and just started wailing. My grandma and another of the old ladies from our club had to drag her away into one of the houses but you could still hear her wailing. It brought tears to my eyes, and to most of the women who were sitting with me. One of them started crying and had to hand her baby off while she got ahold of herself. Nobody else wailed like that woman, though. It’s not really considered couth to show any emotion like that, except maybe just a glum face.

So then we started getting water. Like, GALLONS upon GALLONS of water. We filled a barrel and two huge pots, plus all the buckets and bowls. I was like…what are they gonna use all this water for? I hauled buckets from the well to the compound. Embarrassing moment: I spilled half of one just as I got into the compound and everyone saw. But no one laughed because it was a melancholy situation.

So we made a HUGE pot of rice and a big pot of sauce but I wanted a bath SO BAD before it was ready that I went home and bathed so I just ate what Setu had made for dinner.

I think they were surprised that I came to sit, but I think they appreciated it. I wish there was something more I could do.

Rain!!

2010-05-24T22:25:00.000Z

Dude, the rain REALLY helps with the heat. Yesterday evening it rained and then it rained off and on throughout the night. Obviously that made it impossible to sleep outside, but inside it was much cooler. I mean, I was still sweating in my bed, but not NEARLY as much as I would be without the rain. And this morning it was positively CHILLY outside which was great. And then the day hasn’t been so bad, I’ve spent a lot of it inside, aside from going to Yusuf’s for tea and shelling peanuts with grandma. Which would be totally undoable without the cooling effect the rain has.

And just now I heard a rumble of thunder so I went outside to look at the sky and the sky to the East looked positively formidable! Well, not THAT formidable, but pretty grim. So I skipped around the compound and said “san ji! San ji!” which means rain (I think san means cloud and ji means water…originally I thought they were calling it “sen ji” which would be farming water, which would make sense, but I think they actually have a word for cloud and they call it that: cloud water) and my family laughed at me and right when I was yelling “san ji!” it started to fall.

I helped a couple of the little kids catch two little goatlets that needed to be shut up with their mother during the rain. Oumarri let the rest of the goats into their house which is across from his. I guess animals easily get lost in the rain. Plus they don’t seem to like getting wet at all. The boys are probably out bringing the cows in right now. They are gonna be soaked when they get back.

But YES, blessed rain!!!! I was much more excited about rain in Guinea because it meant I had more water – for drinking, washing, doing laundry, everything – especially for bathing, but half the time if it started raining I’d just go out in my latrine and take my bath, grateful for the extra water to make washing my hair possible. I fondly remember sitting on my porch (bless that porch!! Great for watching storms and lightning!), catching rain in my five buckets, filtering them into my six 20L bidons, drinking a cocktail. It was a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon, really. I don’t do that here, of course. Because I have an unlimited supply of water from the well, and I don’t have a porch, nor do I have any cocktail ingredients. Definitely makes me nostalgic for Guinea, where I loved watching the storms.

No, here the rain just signifies the breaking of the heat. And that’s enough.

Phases

2010-05-24T22:24:00.000Z

So I’m going through one of my food phases right now. While I could NEVER get sick of peanut sauce (in fact, I should challenge myself to this statement if it were available), I am fatigued with the food here at site. I mean, breakfast is always and has always been seri, which is a flavorless porridge made of millet. Some days I choke down a few bites but it’s just so BORING that most of the time I’d rather save myself the carbs than force myself to eat it. Lunch is toh, every day. And now that it’s rained some, it’s made with fresh baobab leaves rather than the dried store, but still…it bores me. Dinner is usually boro boro sauce or a tomato-based soup sauce, but the tomatoes are in such sorry condition right now, tomato season being over, that it is pretty tasteless. And I am absolutely disgusted by the “datu” (was in Guinea, too, but they didn’t use it much), which is this sticky black stuff that REEKS and is made of the seeds of the Nere tree, fermented. I mean it’s good that they eat it because it has some protein but when I smell it I am immediately turned off and lose any appetite.

So, due to my boredom with food, I’ve been eating a lot of my Easy Mac (yay! Actually, it’s Annie’s or Trader Joe’s individual microwaveable mac and cheese but who needs to be specific?), and started in on my dehydrated food again. This week it’s been pinto beans, tomato powder and half a small fresh onion (I use the word “fresh” lightly, I bought those onions almost seven months ago – but they’re still good!), boiled with a ton of taco seasoning, cumin and cayenne pepper, topped with a triangle of Laughing Cow cheese. I call it “Frijoles Mexicanas aux Villageois”. I even add some kick to my Easy Mac by sprinkling cayenne pepper on it. Yum. But I’m going to run out of ingredients pretty quickly. Laughing Cow, first of all, then onions, then Easy Mac, then beans, then spices. Which means I’m going to have to make a BKO trip pretty soon to stock up on Laughing Cow and onions. And write home for Easy Mac. I think I have enough beans and spices to last me until I get sick of this regimen.

So in addition to food-phases, I’m also going through my future-phases. I thought all this time alone in an African village would give me more insight on my future, but I am floundering now perhaps even more than I was a year and a half ago. For example, there are days when I’m like, “yeah, I might extend my service a couple of months in order to get the pump done if it doesn’t go through in the next month”. There are other days when I’m like EFF THAT, get me out of here as soon as possible! And still others when I’m like yeah, I want to COS on time but then get an expat job somewhere in Africa for another year or so.

And then I think about what I want to do when I get home. Some days I’m like, yeah, I am DEFINITELY going back to LA. And I’m going to live alone in Echo Park, close to John, Leggett and Caitlin. And other days when I’m like no, I definitely need to give NYC a try. But I guess on that front I’m only floundering between two options: LA or New York. I wouldn’t mind living in San Francisco, either, but not right now.

Sometimes I want to go to grad school, but I don’t know what for. Sometimes I really want to pick Yogi up and bring him back with me and other times I don’t, because in the entertainment industry, you never know how long you’re going to be away from home and dogs need attention.

Sometimes I really want to get my cat back from my Aunt Sue and other times I entertain the idea that she might be better off out there in the country.

Sometimes I think I want to get cable and other times I think – no, just internet, I can get all the shows I want to watch on the net and not have to pay for cable! Will I buy a PowerBook, an iMac, or both (how much of my readjustment allowance am I willing to give Apple?). Am I going to buy a car? I don’t want to buy gas anymore, but is it really feasible not to, yet? Am I willing to take out a loan to do so?

I guess I’m just having a tough time making DECISIONS. And sticking with them.

I think what I’ll do is I’ll probably apply to some jobs in Africa, but I’ll only take one if it’s an offer too good to pass up ($30k a year, one year contract – I could pay off all my student loans in one year if I took a job like that and lived cheap, which you can do out here). But if it doesn’t pay enough, or wants me to sign a contract for more than a year, probably not. Then when I get home I’ll probably apply to the DGA Trainee Program. I’ll probably apply to both the NY program AND the LA program, which I think would require me to take a trip to NYC to take the test, but that’s ok. If I’m not accepted (or even if I am), I’ll apply for jobs with National Geographic Channel, Discovery, Planet Green, try to get on some kind of location shoot in some random part of the world – hey, I have experience working and living in some of the poorest nations in the world and under extreme social, cultural, gastronomical and environmental conditions (did you know Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to try out for Survivor?)! Hire me!

I’ll finish post-production on Tempest and Travels (three years in the making!). I’ll make that documentary about my late grandfather (heck, I’ve already gathered all my elements). Actually make finished DVDs of Costello to send to my cast and crew (if Bates finishes the documentary!). I’ll start writing again.

I guess the only thing that I’ve definitively decided in the year and a half I’ve been in Africa is that I still want to work in the Industry. I just can’t see myself doing anything else. And don’t know that I have the skillset to do anything else, when it comes down to it!

So…I guess I’ll just have to see where the future takes me. Which is another phase. Because sometimes I think that way and other times I think – NO! I have to make my own future! Pick a goal and work towards it!)

Le sigh.

Well, in other news, the guy Adama originally asked to come to my site to supervise the building of the latrines never showed (he was supposed to be here last Thursday and no one can reach him), so instead he is sending two other guys, who should arrive this afternoon. We should break ground tomorrow, inshallah. And then hopefully by the weekend I can go to BKO and close out my project and turn in the pump project and by some Hail Mary and begging the pump diggers to do the pump on credit until the money gets here, get the pump done before the end of June. Which will open up all the doors for all the other projects I wanted to do that are pump-related (like the tree nursery). And then during rainy season I’ll probably do a soap-making training. That’s kind of all that’s on the books right about now. Maybe a World Map at the school. Except that paint is really expensive.

Oh yeah! Two camels walked through our compound today. For some reason there were two Touaregs in town (weird part of the country for them to be traveling through by camel, but, there you have it) and they both happened into our compound with their HUGE camels. I was shelling peanuts with one of the grandmas when they came through. And I was just like, “another day in Africa” and shelled another nut.

Caution: Dangerous Rocks aka The Elephant Entry

2010-05-16T22:23:00.000Z

So we took our trip out to Paul’s site to see the wild elephants. It was me, Corinna, Mark, Danielle, Scotty, Molly and Yik. So the trip out there was epic. I was with Molly, Scotty and Yik and we left from BKO. To begin with, we went to Gana Transport at 5am because we thought they had a bus out there but it turned out they didn’t have one until the next day. So we got another taxi and went across the river to Binke Transport. Where there was nobody selling tickets or providing info for like 2 hours. Oh wait, let’s back up. So it was Yik’s genius idea that we stay up all night the night before we were leaving since we had to go to the gare at 5am anyway and once it got to be 1 or 2am it didn’t seem worth it to go to bed so we didn’t. BAD MOVE.

So after waiting hours at the Binke gare, the bus finally leaves. And we have pretty good seats! Right by the back door and under an emergency exit hatch, which they keep open during the trip. There are no windows. This trip is supposed to take 18 hours on a good day. So Molly and I are pretty slap happy from not sleeping and we are laughing so hard about ridiculous shit that isn’t even funny to the point where our stomachs hurt.

So this bus breaks down in Segou, which is like 3-4 hours from BKO. Like, it breaks irreparably, which is really rare here. Usually they just tie some shit together with a strip of rubber and we go on our waybut not this time. So they send a bus from BKO to come get everyone. We end up stuck in Segou for seven hours. Awesome. We almost gave up and just went home. But we didn’t and we’re really glad we stuck it out.

After the new bus got there and we headed out, nothing really went wrong and we faded in and out of fitful, uncomfortable sleep all night. We finally arrived at Paul’s site at 7am the next day, and his counterpart Lelele met us as we were getting off the bus and took us to his place (he runs a small hotel), where Mark, Corinna and Danielle were already sleeping, having arrived a few hours earlier. We didn’t sleep. Just bathed. And had breakfast (sweetened Seri).

After lunch we piled into a Land Rover to head out into the desert and find the elephants! We drove all day. The elephants were really far out there at this time of year but Lelele was DETERMINED to find them and said he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night if we didn’t find them. As the sun is going down, we make it to this big watering hole. You might even call it a lake. And what’s on the other side of it? ELEPHANTS!!! Dude it was so cool! I mean, yeah, we’ve all seen elephants in the zoo, but seeing them out there in their natural habitat doing what they do is amazing.

So we drove around the lake to get closer to them and took pictures and watched them until it got too dark. Or…until I noticed a big elephant coming towards us from our right and pointed it out to Lelele and he told us all to MOVE right away. Apparently that elephant was the chief and he had smelled us and was coming over to see what was up. Once we moved he went up to the water and bathed himself. It was cool.

Funny enough the chauffer was scared of elephants and once we got out of the car he drove away to safety. Heehee.

So then we set out to find a spot in the desert to make camp for the night. We found a place that looked good put our grass mats on the ground and watched the stars while waiting for dinner. We also ate a bunch of melted chocolate Scotty had on her (still tasty!). Lelele’s wife had made us couscous with chicken and sauce for dinner and it was DELICIOUS. I wished I could eat more when my stomach was full, it tasted so good.

We got ready for bed and laid down and chatted and watched the stars until we all started to drop off to sleep. The night sky is amazing out in the desert. You can see SO many stars and for some reason there was no moon so eventually we could even see the Milky Way. SWEET!

So at some point during the night I wake up and see Yik and Danielle standing up, pointing their flashlights out into the night. And I’m like, “what are you guys doing?” They say there’s a big animal out there, they can hear it moving around and after a second I hear it too in addition to a growling sound that sounded more like it should come from a lion than an elephant. Yik’s like, “I’m waking up Lelele!” So he wakes up Lelele and he bangs pots and pans to try and scare the elephants away so they don’t come step on us. This, obviously, wakes EVERYONE up. Eventually he thinks they have started to move away so we settle to go back to sleep. And then, from another direction, there is this loud trumpeting sound and a pounding of feet and we’re like HOLY SHIT they’re coming for us!! At first I was just going to sit up and get ready to run but then I see other people running to the car so I was like EEK!!! And got up and ran. Corinna is trying to get in the back of the car and Molly is pushing on her like HURRY UP!!!! I climbed on top of the car, followed by Danielle. Everyone else is at least on their feet. Except Paul. Who is still laying on his mat, covered by a blanket, hands twined behind his head. The chauffer says the elephants are fighting. Then Lelele says, “Get up!” So Paul begrudgingly gets up and we have to leave the vehicle to pack up our stuff because we are going to move camp.

So we move camp a hundred meters or so to this more raised ground that actually had softer sand and fall back asleep. I wake up to see Danielle standing up pointing her flashlight out into the night again. And I’m like, “what now?” I can hear something out there but it doesn’t sound nearly as close or as dangerous. I swear I nearly wet myself when I heard that elephant trumpet and start to charge. Lelele is up and he tells us it’s elephants again but they aren’t coming closer so we should go back to sleep. The next day he tells us it was jackals but that he didn’t want to say anything at the time because he didn’t want to scare us. I was like yeah. I am SO less afraid of wild dogs than I am of wild elephants, thankyouverymuch.

So in the morning we go try to find the elephants again but by the time we get to the watering hole they’ve already gone into the forest and it’s too dangerous to follow them in there. We go look at the elephant tracks around our original campsite and the closest tracks were like…half a football field away, if that. Too close!!! And sure enough there was one set of tracks that ended in a skid. That was probably the one who we thought was trying to charge us. He sounded angry.

So we saw a bunch of touareg herders who were all nice about pointing which way the elephants had gone that morning but ultimately it was fruitless. But we saw more camels!! Camels are sweet by the way!!

So we headed back to town which took several hours and went to Paul’s favorite bar where they have cold beer and good food.

The next day, we decide to go hiking out to the red dunes. The walk out there wasn’t so bad, and then we climbed the dunes and Mark threw himself down them several times. We got sand everywhere. There were these weird silver ants up there…I’m curious what they were! One of the coolest things was getting up on a ridge and stepping on the edge of the ridge which would cause a little avalanche of sand that lierally looked like liquid running down the face of the dune. Really cool. But any disturbances we made in the form of footprints or sandfalls were quickly washed away by the sand and wind.

The walk back was a lot harder. It was only like 10am but the sun felt like about 1. Molly was getting heat exhaustion. There were a few points when we didn’t even know if she would make it back. It seemed to take FOREVER, but we did finally make it back and then Danielle and I chugged cold Cokes at the bar.

The next day we went to the animal market to look at camels up close. They are the weirdest creatures!!! HUGE!!! And their back legs are so crazy. They are just totally weird looking. Like a cross between a giraffe and an alien.

That afternoon we caught a bus and went to Sevare, where we spent the night. The next day we had breakfast at the hotel, Mac’s Refuge, which serves an all-you-can-eat pancake and French toast breakfast for 1 mille for PCVs. Crazy good deal! And really good food.

So then we waited at the side of the road for a bus to the Carrefour that goes to Djenne, which is an entire city made of mud. You are not allowed to build with anything but mud in Djenne, by law. It is also the home of a huge mosque made all of mud that has been there over 100 years!! If anybody remembers the opening scene of Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey (why would you?), that takes place in front of the famous mud mosque.

So it was pretty cool to see all that and we had lunch with the PCV who lives there. Mark told us a story about a little building we passed called “The Tomb of the Young Girl” or something like that. Apparently, when they were founding Djenne (which was founded as an Islamic center but for some reason wanted to perform this animistic ritual – just in case), they needed to find a young virgin girl to bury alive to consecrate the land. So the story goes that all the eligible girls were put into a lottery except for the chief’s daughter, who was considered exempt. But she didn’t think that was fair, so she volunteered to be sacrificed. So they buried her alive under this tomb. And she cried for 30 days. Then they went and called in to her basically, “Look, we really need this site consecrated. You need to die or it doesn’t count.” So she stopped crying and died. Legend has it you can still sometimes hear her crying inside the tomb. Freaky, right?

So that afternoon we took a taxi back out to the Carrefour and right away a bus to BKO came by and picked us (me, Molly and Danielle) up. It was practically empty so we each got two seats and were able to sleep pretty well.

We made it back with no further problems. Except that we all ran out of money. Luckily, Peace Corps deposited our June allowances early this month so it should hopefully be there soon! That’s going to save my ass, for sure.

Anyway, all in all an amazing trip with amazing people and I knocked two more things off my “to do in Mali” list. Now it’s just Manantali (Fourth of July), Dogon (September or October), a Niger river trip in a pirogue and Tombouctou (Timbuktu)/time in the desert (after COS – it’s not allowed for PCVs). I’ve also decided that after COS I HAVE to take a trip actually out into the Sahara. I mean, to be this close and not do that would be a mistake I’d regret for the rest of my life! So I’m doing it.

Inshallah ☺.

Note: Caution: Dangerous Rocks refers to something Mark said when we were out hunting elephants in reference to the Touareg herders who see those elephants every day and in fact follow them because their herds eat the stuff the elephants drop. Mark was like, “To them they’re probably just like rocks…very dangerous rocks.”

Help Me Fund My Village's Pump!!

2010-05-14T10:42:00.000Z

So in addition to all the fun I'm having, I'm also (trying) to do work! Right now I am trying to get a water pump project funded at my primary school. We have only one school in my village, it serves grades 1-6. There are over 230 students and they attend school 6 days a week. The problem is, there is no water at the school. Teachers send students (usually girls, during instruction time) to uncovered, untreated wells hundreds of yards away to retrieve some water for drinking, but it's not enough and it's NOT potable (clean). So I'm trying to get the funding to put in an India/Mali style pump at the school, which will make potable water available right on school grounds year-round. I'm applying to Peace Corps funding for the bulk of the project ($10,000 - to dig the borehole), but still need to find another $3,000 somewhere.

Hence where you come in! At the bottom of this email I have included the address to my Peace Corps Partnership Program project. You can click, read a little about my project, and if you are so inclined, give a small donation. It's tax-deductible! I know nobody has a lot of disposable income right now but even $5 will help. I need to have this funded within the next three weeks so if you are able to make a donation, PLEASE do it ASAP. Also, please spread the word to any , friends or coworkers you think might be interested in making a difference in the lives of hundreds of poverty-stricken African children (guilt trip! :P).

Here's the website for my project:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-328

Chick Rescue: Redux

2010-05-01T10:40:00.000Z

So I am attempting to rescue another baby chicken. You may remember the chick I saved in training, which is probably dead by now, but…the point is I saved him at the time! And hopefully he got eaten by my host family, not one of those big birds that swoop down and steal little chickens (they call it an “eagle”, but it isn’t an eagle as far as I know).

So today me and Drissa were walking over to Yusuf’s to hang out and have tea. Just outside his compound I heard a chick chirping and looked down and saw one, tiny lone chick on the ground. I bent and picked him up. I looked around. No mommy in sight. I examined him a little further and saw that he had a sore on his head, probably from being viciously pecked by some mother hen whose coven (brood? What do you call it?) he was trying to join. Drissa says it’s possible he doesn’t have a mother hen at all (I wasn’t sure exactly how that would work, but…ok). Yusuf didn’t know anything about it and I didn’t see any mother hens with chicks about his size (he is only a day or so old). So I decided to see if I couldn’t keep him alive myself.

A name came to me rather quickly: Shamu. Like the whale. So if my naming instincts end up as usual, he will probably survive awhile.

Drissa and Yusuf were like, “you can’t raise that chicken! He’s going to die! Just leave him alone! What are you going to feed him?” I said, “millet.” Yusuf said he is too small to eat millet – he won’t eat it. And I was like well we’ll see. Either I leave him on the ground now and he dies or I take him home and try and he might still die, but probably more comfortably. Which is exactly what I said about Yogi when I took him in and he turned out fantastic! I told them this chick is going to end up being the biggest chicken in the village. They were like, “yeah right.” We shall see!!

Anyway, I remember in elementary school we used to hatch chickens in an incubator, no mommy hen required. But I don’t remember what we fed them… Or how long we kept them. But still – it CAN be done!

So I took him home and made him a house out of a USPS flat rate box. I boiled water and put it in a plastic bottle wrapped with a handkerchief to be a heat source/his fake mommy. And I mushed up some of this morning’s seri into a water bottle cap and put it in there. He loves the hot water bottle. He is always snuggling up to it because he is cold. I stuck his beak in the watered down, mushed up seri until he started eating it. We went back over to Yusuf’s and after a few minutes I looked in the box and he was eating the seri out of the bottle cap all on his own! So neener neener neeeeeeeener – he eats!

They said my cat is going to eat him but she appears to have no interest in him whatsoever. But I will still protect his box at night so she doesn’t think of him as a midnight snack.

So we’ll see how long he lives.

LONG LIVE SHAMU!!!

Lil Update: it’s dinnertime and he’s still alive. He LOVES the water bottle, always snuggled up inside there to stay warm. I fed him some more and he eats pretty good. I haven’t noticed him eating on his own, again, but I just feed him until he starts to struggle, which to me means he’s full. I don’t know how much he is supposed to eat. Everybody is laughing at me, of course, but let’s see them laugh when he gets served up for dinner!! “Oh, did you want some of this chicken that you said I couldn’t keep alive? Oh oops, I ate it all!!!!” Yeah, that’s probably a lie. If I raise him I prolly won’t be able to eat him…

Another note: my cat just caught the little lizard friend that lived in my bedroom window. THIS time she decided to play with him before eating him. I was like, “Magellan! JUST EAT HIM!” I could see the poor little guy hyperventilating and trying to get away. She finally ate him, back end first. The circle of life. RIP lizard friend.

Adventures in Transport

2010-04-28T10:39:00.000Z

I am going to do something stupid. I’m going to try to sleep inside again. Well, now that I’m typing it I might not because I all of a sudden just got hot. But whenever it gets too unbearable, it seriously does not take long to pitch my tent, the beauty of the REI Bug Hut. I would say it has turned out to be a quality purchase and I would probably buy it again. I’ve definitely used it enough for it to be worth it. Though, at the same time, you can buy mesh tents in Bamako on the side of the road. You couldn’t in Guinea, but you can here. So food for thought. I don’t know how much they cost but I’m betting less than the $60-70 I spent on my Bug Hut.

So I did something else stupid the last time I went to Bamako (this past weekend). I tried to go to Raven’s house using a sotrama, which is a much cheaper way to travel than a private taxi. A taxi from the gare to Raven’s is 1 mille (1000 CFA). Each sotrama (there are two) are about 150 CFA, making the trip 300 CFA, making it less than 1/3 of the cost. But that depends on how you look at cost.

So I get there at 9:15 in the morning. I had gotten really lucky with transport and gotten in super early. So I was like I have plenty of time to try and figure out how to take the sotrama to Aci 2000/Hamdallaye. So I ask these dudes standing by this sotrama that always try to get me to take it and I just tell them I’m taking a taxi. This time they’re trying to get me to take a taxi rather than the sotrama but I was adamant. So they say there’s no direct sotrama from this gare so I have to take this sotrama to this other sotrama stop in the market and then get the Aci sotrama there. I’m like ok. So it takes like 45 minutes for this sotrama to leave. If I had taken a taxi, I would have been at Raven’s in about 15 minutes. But I’m thinking: look at all the money you’re gonna save!

So this sotrama finally leaves but since it has to go into the market, traffic is awful and it takes like 30 min to get to this next sotrama stop. I get there and I ask around about my sotrama and they tell me to wait on the benches, that it will be coming up to the space in front of the benches shortly. So, everybody knows where I’m going. Every time a sotrama pulls up I point at it and I’m like, “that one?” And they’re like, “no”. So eventually one pulls up and they’re like, “that one”. I get in it. It takes like an hour to leave.

So we’re going along and everything’s fine until we start LEAVING BAMAKO. I’m like. Dude. This is so NOT the right sotrama. We go up a mountain into this little village where there are NO other cars. Everybody gets out except me. The driver is like…”where are you going?” And I’m like, “back en ville…I messed up.” And after the breakdown I already had last week, this is just getting my goat and I’m wanting to cry and trying really hard not to in front of all these people and this mango woman is making fun of me and there’s NOTHING I can do but stay in this sotrama until it goes back to civilization.

The driver can see I’m kind of distraught and they are LOADING the back up with tons of mangoes, anyway, so he tells me to sit up front. I was really grateful for this. So when we finally leave he asks me where I was going. I say “Aci 2000” and he’s like, “wow…you REALLY messed up.” And I’m like yeah. Well, this village is supposedly called “Lassi”. So either the people at the sotrama stop thought I said Lassi, not Aci (but I said Aci HAMDALLAYE so I have no idea how this could have happened) OR they were playing a joke on me. Real f-ing funny, guys. I tell the driver just to leave me at the first place I can get a taxi. So we get back to town and he drops me with some taxis.

What does his apprentice do? HE MAKES ME PAY THE FARE AGAIN. I was like you little bastard. I go to the taxis and a driver walks out to meet me. I pay 1000 CFA to get to Raven’s. I get there at 12:15pm. So basically I wasted 3 hours and about 500 CFA on this adventure.

I’ll never do it again. For even the simple fact that even if I DID get in the right sotrama, it would still take an hour and a half or two hours to get out to Aci and it would take 15 min in a cab. I think it’s a worthy investment, personally.

So today when I took a taxi back to the gare, I paid my 1000 CFA and then as I was getting out, I found a mille stuck between the door and the seat. So…free taxi! Awesome!

I HATE FLIES!

2010-04-22T16:26:00.000Z

So this morning I had a mental breakdown. It occurred to me that pretty much the only thing that could make me ET (early terminate) is this awful, miserable season.

So let’s start with last night. As usual, after dinner I got ready for bed, pitched my tent, and laid down to read. This was all hunky dory and I even had the thought that it wasn’t so bad tonight and I didn’t really feel the heat radiation that comes up from the ground and that this might be a comfortable night. That’s when the winds came. Normally, wind isn’t such a bad thing especially when it’s a nice cool breeze. But this? This was like hurricane force (ok I’m exaggerating) and all it did was blow a dust storm into my tent, covering EVERYTHING and nearly blowing my tent over. Oh and did I mention the part about these winds blowing in some RIDICULOUS humidity? I was seriously expecting it to start raining, it had to be around 90% or so. In fact, I was PRAYING for rain. So after toughing this out for over an hour I was finally like, it’s not going to stop, forget it, I’ll just go inside! So just as I decide this and sit up, my nose starts gushing blood. This happens due to all the dry, dusty air. I NEVER got nosebleeds in America. This is a Mali thing. And I didn’t have a handkerchief. So I’m holding my shirt to my nose to catch the blood and trying to find my keys and of course once I get out of the tent if I don’t drag it with me the wind is going to have it and take it away so I’m stumbling around, holding my nose, pulling my tent and trying to unlock my door. I push and pull the tent inside, find a handkerchief and try to stop the bleeding. Once the bleeding stops, I take the tent apart and throw myself onto my bed. It is freaking HOT inside the house and I am COVERED in dust so my bed basically becomes a hot, sweaty, muddy mess. And I have to sleep in it.

Oh and did I mention how uncomfortable it is sleeping with the infection on my thigh? Yeah. And of course I am nauseous from the erythromycin and all the blood that went down my throat and now the triple antibiotic bitter taste that’s leaking down the back of my throat and I just wanted to cry. But crying would probably just make me hotter so I just try to sleep.

So this morning I wake up to Setu bringing my bath water and I look around my house and everything is COVERED in dust. It doesn’t matter how many times I wash my table, it is perpetually covered with a not-so-thin layer of dust. Of course all my sheets and pillowcases are disgusting, I’m freaking exhausted and the only thing that makes me feel even a little bit better is washing my hair.

I’m so sick to my stomach I can’t even tough the seri so I make Easy Mac for breakfast because I have to eat SOMETHING or I’ll be even more sick. I tear all through my house looking for a hairtie after tearing through everything looking for shampoo so the house is a freaking wreck. And my face itches all over from this stupid mango allergy and I want to scratch the whole dang thing off my skull.

I can’t take it anymore so I call Scotty. Thank God for reseau. I’m standing on the chair, gripping the window bars, tilting my head in just such a way so that I get the phone signal and like crying and cussing at the top of my lungs about how if one more M-Fing fly lands on me I’m going to freak the f*** out. Whenever a family member comes into view I try to wipe my eyes and put a smile on my face but I think they knew I was having a bad morning. So Scotty talks me down a little and makes me laugh a little which is the best medicine. She says she is feeling the same way and hot season freaking sucks but I hate her because she has electricity and a fan and can get cold water anytime she wants it (I hate you Scotty!!!). But still, she knows what I’m going through. She says I should just come to her site today and we’ll have cold cokes and sleep under a fan and it sounds awesome but I have literally been back to my site for six days and I know I’m better than that. But Katie is passing through BKO on Sunday and it would be nice to see her so I’m going to go to BKO on Saturday and me and Scotty are gonna go to Broadway Café and have strawberry milkshakes and then go to the pool at the American Club. Sweet respite.

Then maybe the latrine money will be there on Monday so Drissa can come down to BKO and we can buy all the stuff and hopefully get started next week. But who knows when the money is actually going to get there? I should call Adama back and see if he’s got any new information.

So after talking to Scotty the only thing I want to do is wash my sheets and all my handkerchiefs which are either filled with blood or dust from trying to clean up the house. So I go buy soap and as I am on my way to the well to wash all this stuff before it gets too hot, even though I suck at washing stuff, especially big stuff like sheets or even pagnes, my first mommy Seli – bless her soul – tells me to bring her the stuff and she will wash it when she is done pounding the rice. This elicits the first genuine smile of the day. I love you, Seli!! So I put my big towel on the ground under my shade hangar and try to get some sleep – everyone tells me to go lay down so I must look like hell. But of course the flies attack me constantly and I don’t have the non-reaction Malians have developed over their lifetimes so I’m constantly twitching, slapping and waving my hands. So basically I don’t sleep. It occurs to me as I’m laying on my towel that what this is like is like being at the beach. Laying on a towel in the heat. Except you have to wear clothes, something that covers your knees, and there’s no ocean to go jump in when you get too hot.

Anyway. Hot season sucks. I hate dust. And flies.

I'm 26 and Still Here

2010-04-21T16:25:00.000Z

So yesterday was my birthday. What did I get? Another huge staph infection – this time on my thigh so I can’t walk right – and an allergy to mangoes, which is pretty much the ONLY redeeming factor of hot season.

The only good thing is that this morning when I was taking my bath, I looked at my staph infection and it had come to this huge purple blister of a head. Which promptly popped as I was bathing. Don’t read any further if you’re easily grossed out. So I squeezed out as much pus (this pus was more like sludgy blood than pus) as I could, then went inside and did the hot compress thing a few times, then bandaged it up with a gauze pad and tape, which I then covered with a head wrap tied around my leg so that when I walk there’s some padding. So it’s now slowly draining into the gauze. Why is this a good thing? You might ask. Well, it means that it’s draining on it’s own and I won’t have to go back to Clinique Pasteur and endure another torture session – this time much more embarrassing, BTW, considering the location of this infection. So hopefully with regular bandage changings, triple antibiotic, erithromicin (oral anti-biotic) and hot compresses, it’ll just go away without surgery – WIN!

So mango allergy. I’d just started eating mangoes again a few days ago after I got back because we are in mango season swing. In Guinea, I used to eat mangoes with a knife. Here I just do what the locals do and bite the skin, peeling the skin off strip by strip with my teeth, and then plunging mouth first into the fruit. I started to get an itchy red rash around my mouth and I was like WTF. At first I thought it was heat rash. But then it dawned on me – mango allergy! Awesome. A lot of volunteers have it. Some can’t eat mangoes at all. Others are just allergic to the skins/sap. I think I am a skin/sap allergy person so if I start eating them with a knife again I should probably be ok. I’m holding off on mangoes for a few days until my rash goes away to be sure that’s what it was, then I’ll start eating again with a knife and see how it goes. It would SUCK to be 100% allergic to them as opposed to just skin/sap. So cross your fingers for me.

In other news, Magellan is officially a “she” and she eats a lot more than she used to! She stays inside at night while I sleep outside. I hope she spends her evenings killing wayward mice and cockroaches, but who knows.

Oh yeah, remember that time I said it wasn’t that hot so I was going to try to sleep inside? EPIC FAIL. I woke up in a swimming pool of my own sweat about midnight and had to get up and pitch my tent in the middle of the night. But then I slept pretty well once I was outside. Drissa said it’s gonna be like this until June. I’m gonna need a massage when this is over.

The puppy sometimes sleeps with me outside my tent. But then when he hears something he barks and wakes me up. Apparently it is Oumarri’s job to see what the dogs bark about when they go off. Because every time the dogs bark, Oumarri gets up with his flashlight and goes and looks out into the field and into the animal pens. Apparently that is the role of the dogs: to tell the family when there’s something moving around that’s unusual at night – something that could potentially hurt one of the animals.

Today when I woke up there was a tiny baby donkey staring into my tent at me. I was like, “good morning.” Then he went away. I <3 baby donkeys.

Oh yeah, Adama called me yesterday and said the funding for my latrine project had been approved. Yay! He said he didn’t know when the money would actually be there yet but the good news is that the latrines will get built before rainy season. Now to see if I can get the pump funding in time, too!

Well, I think that’s all from the home front. By my birthday next year (27 – one step closer to 30!! But I decided my thirties are gonna be a rockin decade so I ain’t that distraught over it) I should be back in LA. But you never know. Shit happens.

Hot Season. Definitely.

2010-04-19T16:24:00.000Z

So. It’s freaking hot. Today wasn’t that bad but that is due to drizzle this morning and blessed cloud cover all day. In fact, I might even sleep inside tonight. It’s more comfortable than the gound outside, where I slept last night but still sweated all night long.

My first night back was Saturday night. Back at site, that is, I was at a Regional IST all last week and before that I was in BKO for a few days after I got back trying to get my funding proposals in. Anyway, Saturday night was BRUTAL. I think I soaked through my mattress. It was awful. I think I got like an hour of sleep the whole night. Last night I pitched my bug hut out under my shade hangar and slept on the ground. Interestingly enough, the ground is HOT. Like, it felt like I was laying on a hot plate. Definitely need to find something to go between me and the ground for future reference. But tonight I think I might sleep inside. I’m not really sweating right now, so that’s a good sign. My mattress is more comfortable than the ground. My back hurt all day today. Ugh.

So my family built a wall next to my house while I was gone. Basically it really makes my house a part of the concession and gives me more privacy. Like, you now have to come IN to the concession to see me, which is what made me feel ok about sleeping outside last night, but I was paranoid every time I heard hoofs nearby that a donkey was going to come step on my head. It was only goats, though. Not that GOATS couldn’t step on my head, but…they weigh less than a donkey.

So I had been gone for almost two months. When I got back even the mean guy at the boutique was smiling. As I walked down the path towards our concession, I saw a bunch of little boys running towards me. They must have spotted me while they were out playing soccer, because they had a soccer ball. I mean, it was freaking HOT out, I have no idea how they managed to sprint all the way across that field to me, but they did! And then they carried all my stuff! Yay! Shaka told me that the puppy was really big now and babbled on in Bambara. The puppy IS really big now. He’s almost as big as the lady dog who has been here the whole time. But he still likes to jump up and put his paws on me and he is FILTHY so I gotta try to break him of that.

So the biggest hit of all the gifts I brought back were the pictures. In fact, the pictures were SO loved that I didn’t even give the rest of the gifts. I’m saving them for later. The whole neighborhood turned out to look at the pictures. I felt bad I hadn’t printed more! People who I don’t even have pictures of were like, “where’s my picture???” So, for any of you wondering what to bring back from America, here’s the answer: pictures! Of course, they don’t know how to handle or care for pictures so there are fingerprints and dirt all over them already and they let the little kids put them in their mouths and they’re all folded and whatnot but hey, at least they freaking loved it! Even my host dad Moussa, who should be too cool for school, could be seen laying in his hammock staring at the pictures for hours. WIN!

Of course the mice took over my house while I was gone. And the spiders. My house was a WRECK when I got back and I got soaked in sweat just trying to straighten it up a LITTLE bit.

Little Aside: So just now I went to give my dinner bowls back to the family and just as I turned to go back to my house, Hawa called my name from across the courtyard and came running up with my cat! I was like sweet! Magellan! So I took him/her back to the house. For some reason they always take a couple of days to give my cat back when I come back. I knew it was Magellan because the second he/she was in my arms he/she started purring. So Magellan explored the house a little to reacquaint himself. I was brushing my teeth. He wasn’t in here even five minutes before he ran under the bed and I heard a little skirmish. I expected to see a mouse running for its life to the mousehole next to my bed. But no mouse appeared. What did appear was Magellan, with a huge mouse in his mouth. Like, the mouse is easily 1/3 the size of Magellan. And to think moments before I was worried I didn’t have any food for him tonight. He is still eating it under my bed. There’s blood on the floor. Gross. Luckily he didn’t play with it before eating it, he just killed it and started crunching. Good kitty.

So the kids seem skinnier for some reason. Like I feel like I can see their ribs more than before. But they don’t really seem to be eating less at all, in fact they are eating all the time, so I don’t really get it. It’s mango season right now and there are SO MANY MANGOES. In fact I have eight of them sitting on my table. But six of them are already soft so I’ll probably give them to the goats tomorrow and eat the other two for breakfast. There are so many mangoes that every day one of the women in the compound makes TWO trips (one in the morning, one in the evening) out to wherever the trees are and brings back a HUGE bowl of them on her head. Like, there must be at least 40 mangoes in each bowl. Maybe at least 50. There are mango pits all over the concession. Sometimes the cows eat the pits. The goats and sheep eat the skins. Mangoes are delicious. Ricardo – you would love this time of year! Except for the heat, anyway. So yeah I don’t get why the kids look skinnier when we are still eating three meals a day, they eat until they’re full at all the meals, sometimes have 1-2 other smaller meals (leftovers) throughout the day and at least 5 mangoes/day each. And I brought back loaves of bread and bananas with me so they had that, too, this weekend. I dunno.

Everybody says hungry season is coming up. Apparently Malians usually are only able to grow 9 months worth of food and June – September are lean months where they have to buy the cereals at inflated prices. But if that’s the case with my family you wouldn’t know it because they do not seem to be slowing down with the meals at all.

One of my grandmas asked me about macaroni today so I’m gonna buy a bunch of spaghetti tomorrow and we can have that, too. Also, Seli came back from market today with a big old bag of rice. So I don’t really know what the deal is. If it does get to be “hungry season”, I don’t mind pitching in more and buying rice at the market on Mondays and some meat. I mean, they feed me all the time, so the least I could do is pitch in and buy some food during the lean times.

So when I left, Abi had just gone to BKO for medical treatment. I think it has something to do with headaches. She is still not back, which means she’s been gone almost 2 months. I hope everything is ok. I was hoping her headaches were just, like, migraines or something but maybe it is something much worse. So if you’re reading this, send some thoughts Abi’s way!! She has a teenager and two young kids (maybe 10ish?).

I think Magellan has fallen into a food coma. His belly was all bloated when he came out from under the bed. He managed to eat that whole thing!!

Well, I think that’s about it. Tomorrow is my 26th birthday. I think I’ll celebrate by eating a bunch of mangoes and spaghetti. Maybe I’ll give Skittles to everyone in my family. We’ll see.

Sad Story

2010-04-06T16:22:00.000Z

So you wanna hear a really sad story? I was on my way back from America (more on this later) and I was in the Atlanta airport. I passed a Duty Free shop and on impulse went in thinking I might get a bottle of good tequila for the forthcoming celebrations of the next year. I perused the Patron, but Patron is expensive. Like the cheapest one was $42. Jose Cuervo? $18. What do I do? I splurge. I buy the Patron. This turns out to be a heartbreaking mistake.

So they deliver the bottle to my plane going to Paris. No big deal. But I remember the bottles me and Jess bought in NYC when we were on our way to Africa for the first time and they had put them in these clear, sealed bags that you weren’t allowed to open. My bottle was just in an open yellow bag.

They do the Duty Free sale thing during the flight and they say that if you are connecting in Paris, you need that TSA-approved bag I was just mentioning (which they have on board for any purchases). I stop the flight attendant and show her what I have and tell her I am connecting in Paris. She says if I bought it in a Duty Free shop and have the receipt (which is stapled to the bag), that is fine. Deep down I don’t believe her, but she should know, right?

Well, she didn’t know. Because I have to go through security again in Paris. Which seems stupid because America’s laws are stricter than France’s, so there should just be a secure hallway taking you to the connecting gates. But there isn’t.

So of course security is like, this had to be in the TSA bag. Your only option is to go out of the airport and go to the Air France desk and check it. I’m like ok. I have like 3 hours before boarding so I have plenty of time to do this. This airport is really confusing, by the way, so I got yelled at for going the wrong way a couple of times and finally just followed my nose.

So I see an Air France customer service desk with no line so I just go to ask him what to do. He spoke perfect English which was good because I didn’t feel up to explaining my predicament in bad West African French to some cute French dude. Let me preface by saying he was really nice and really sympathetic. But since I had already checked 2 bags, and couldn’t get access to them, I would have to pay 200 Euros to check my frigging bottle of tequila as a third bag – even though I still had plenty of weight left in my checked bags. I was like fuck. DAMN YOU ATLANTA DUTY FREE!! AND DELTA FLIGHT ATTENDANT!

He was like there really is no other option. If you take it back to security they will just throw it away. So I asked him if he drank tequila. Then he felt REALLY bad. But I sure as shit wasn’t going to pay 200 Euros for it when it only (only? Ha!) cost $42. So I gave it to him. It was Cute Air France Customer Service Agent’s lucky day. I was like if I’m not too depressed I might buy another bottle at the Duty Free shop here. And then have an $84 bottle of Patron for some (what would now have to be) VERY special occasion.

I do stop in the Duty Free shop but they only have one kind of tequila and it’s some no name brand that didn’t look any more impressive than the bottle of tequila you can buy in Bamako for 10 mille, which is like $20, and it cost almost 17 Euros. So I was like fuck it.

Basically I wasted $42 giving a gift of really good tequila to some dude I don’t know who will probably celebrate by getting drunk with his hot French girlfriend and having wild tequila sex. So you’re welcome.

But he’ll probably never forget me! I’m sure he’ll be telling the story about how he once got a brand new unopened bottle of Patron from some poor Peace Corps volunteer who spent ¼ of her monthly salary on it.

But I’m not bitter. After all, I got a France customs stamp on my passport out of it.

Epic fail.

In America

2010-03-02T16:18:00.002Z

Well. I am in the Atlanta airport, sitting in a restaurant called “Paschal’s”, drinking a mixed drink in a fancy glass, waiting on my first plate of restaurant nachos in 15 months.

You must be wondering why I’m in America. Well, my grandfather passed away over the weekend. My mom called and told Peace Corps how important he was to me and they granted an exception and gave me emergency leave (usually they only grant it for parents/siblings). So my flight out of Bamako was delayed like 3 hours last night and we didn’t get in the air until like 2am. Got to Paris, left on time. I just arrived in Atlanta not long ago at all. Once we got off the plane, we had to go through customs, where a dude with a Brooklyn accent cleared me in moments. Then I had to wait what seemed like FOREVER for my bag. I was in such a rush, thinking I was going to miss my flight, I threw my bag on top of my head, making it obvious to everyone in the airport that I have lived in West Africa for the last 15 months. People were looking at me like I was crazy. But I was in a rush, and it was much easier to carry it on my head.

So I dropped that with the re-check-in guys and BOOTED it to get to my gate. I get there, I hand her my stuff and tell her I need to check in for Greensboro. I’m wondering why they’re not boarding yet. Then she tells me that flight is cancelled and so have the last 4. I was like SHIT. What about Charlotte? She said same thing, the weather in that part of North Carolina is just not good right now.

So I’m rebooked for a 7:10pm flight to Greensboro, and inshallah, it will take off. The gate agent was nice enough to lend me her phone to call my mom because she said the pay phones were “way too expensive”, and my mom said that the snow in NC was letting up. So a girl can dream. Linda said that Maggie was having the same problems.

So, verdict on the nachos is “OH MAN, it’s that crappy nacho cheese and not REAL cheese. And no beans! But a healthy dollop of sour cream.” So I didn’t eat all that much of it. I thought, “in Mali there’d be a little African child to give these leftovers to…here they are just going in the trash.” Sigh.

But these drinks she’s been bringing me have been good, and strong, like she promised. I’m on #3, which will be my last one. They’re like $7 apiece and they’re the cheapest one. America is expensive.

So. My flights have been painful. And not because of the armpit infection. That one feels fine. It’s the one on my abdomen/hip. It’s been hurting like a bitch this whole time. In the Paris airport I went to the bathroom and took the band-aid off it, reapplied triple antibiotic, and recovered it with gauze and tape this time, because I thought the band aid was what was hurting. Towards the end of the flight from Paris to Atlanta, it started feeling wet. And not hurting. And I was like that’s weird. So I went to the bathroom here in the Atlanta airport after finding out my flight was cancelled and apparently it burst or something. There was gross pus-y stuff all over the gauze and there is a HOLE in my stomach! I’m like FUCK. I hope that’s a good sign. I cleaned it with a moist towelette, put more triple antibiotic on it, and put a new gauze and tape on it. It’s been stinging since then. I don’t like seeing sort of large holes that open up into my insides. That is pas bonne. Luckily my aunt Sue should be able to at least help me clean it good and tell me if it’s normal/good when I get to NC. She is a nurse at a hospital. I’m thinking getting pus out, since there was evidently some in there, is probably a good thing. Considering what they did to me at Clinique Pasteur yesterday.

Oh I haven’t even told this story. So I get into the bureau and show doctor Dawn the ping-pong sized ball in my armpit. She’s like oh, well I will stick a needle in it and see if I get any pus out and if I do I’ll send you to Clinique Pasteur and let Dr. Toure cut it open and drain it. So she sticks the needle in it and pulls the plunger and a little droplet of pus comes out in the syringe. Awesome. So they send me to CP. And after a WHILE, I finally get called into the operating room. The nurse (who seemed like a pretty capable dude), started shooting me up with local anesthetic. That HURT. Not really the needle, but the pressure of all the liquid anesthetic. So then we wait a couple of minutes for Dr. Toure. He comes in. No pomp and circumstance. I don’t even think he said a word. He just walked right in, picked up the scalpel, and stabbed me. He and the nurse were holding me down. I was trying hard to be a good patient. Then he picked up scissors. I was like, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA DO WITH THOSE SCISSORS???” And he cut me with those. And THEN, the real pain started. They started squeezing the ping pong ball, all around it, as hard as they could. I was involuntarily screaming and kicking my legs. It fucking HURT. They keep wiping with gauze and getting new gauze and Dr. Toure is saying, “trop de pus! Trop de pus!” And then they finally stop. And I’m like HOLY SHIT. And he’s like, “ok, we got all the pus out, you’re good. The nurse is gonna patch you up now.” So then the nurse starts like shoving gauze with antiseptic on it into the wound and I’m kicking again, but Dr. Toure has left. Mercifully, he finally finishes (after shoving a piece of gauze INTO the wound and covering it) and I get to get up. I almost fell when I tried to stand up. They give me antibiotics and a painkiller and send me on my way.

Aissata was like, “let me sit down before you tell this story” because apparently she doesn’t like gore, when I was telling her and Dr. Dawn about it when I got back to the med unit.

So hopefully I am in better shape than before. But I’ll tell ya…that shit was painful. Welcome to West African medicine. And this was at a patron clinic. If I’d been at a vrai centre de santé, there would have been no anesthesia, next to no sanitation, and probably a ton more pain (and more people holding me down).

But hey, if anything goes wrong now, I get to see an American doctor. Who will hopefully know what to do. There was a horror story from someone in Guinea who came to the US and came down with malaria and the doctor had no experience with tropical diseases and ended up making her recovery way worse than it had to be (she was in the hospital for like a week).

America is weird. People talk/complain about the weirdest shit. I may have thought this before Africa, though. Americans are so fat. And I can’t believe we eat some of the disgusting stuff we eat. Like the nachos I had earlier. Gross. I am sore about it, too, because now I am at the Samuel Adams restaurant and THEY have nachos with REAL cheese AND beans.

All I want to do is eat. Food sounds delicious. I need to pace myself. And not eat anything disgusting. I have a month. Just have to keep reminding myself.

Pain

2010-02-27T01:18:00.000Z

So this lump in my armpit? HURTS. My family saw it today and they were like HEEEEEEEEY! And then they called it something in Bambara like “sumani” or something like that. I’ll have to ask Dr. Dawn if they were right. Also this antibiotic I’m taking gives me a stomachache, even when I take it with food. And my other ailments hurt, too. Everything hurts. It makes you grateful for those days when you just feel normal.

So I tried to button up my house pretty good today since I’m not sure if I’ll be zipping right back here or not. By button up I mean: water buckets empty, water filter empty, all dishes clean, no messes (especially edible ones), all travel bottles full, etc. It all depends on how things go at the dentist. I’m fairly sure that whatever it is, it can’t be taken care of in Bamako. Which means Dakar, or worse (better?), South Africa. I just hope that this dentist is good enough to identify the problem. Before it gets a lot worse. That’s been one of my experiences here. Doctors in general are not very good with preventative care or diagnosing something before it becomes a really big problem. They tend to wait until it is a really big obvious problem before they can either A. recognize it or B. care to do anything about it. My one exception would be Traian. But unfortunately he is out of my life now.

What I really hate about doctors (all doctors, not just the ones here) is that they don’t trust you to know what’s going on with your own body. Like, I know what’s normal about my body better than you do, you’ve been examining it for five minutes. This was especially evident the last time I was in Dakar, when it took a week to do a root canal because the dentist wasn’t hitting the nerve when he was giving me novocaine. I could tell I wasn’t numb before he even started doing anything. I could tell he hadn’t hit the nerve when he gave me the SHOT, for crying out loud. And he kept saying stuff like oh, it’s the nerve, it’s so inflamed, or there’s this swelling pressure or blah de blah blah blah. This happened multiple times. Like, multiple DAYS. And I just said to the APCMO (American), “dude, he’s not hitting the nerve. I’ve had enough novocaine shots in my life (like, hundreds) to know he isn’t hitting the nerve.” And the APCMO did the verbal equivalent of patting me on the shoulder and telling me to run along and play now. I was like, whatever dude. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. If you keep messing it up until it gets REALLY bad, you’ll have to send me to America and then I can have some Mexican food. So swing away.

Anyway. I’m headed to the BKO tomorrow to take care of all this medical hubbub on Monday. Wish me luck.

I Blame Dakar

2010-02-26T01:18:00.000Z

So the last time I came back from Dakar (which was after my infamous root canal incident), I had “the fungus” on my back. We call it “the fungus” because lots of volunteers get it and I don’t think anyone knows the actual name for it, anyways. It looks like blotchy white spots on your skin. It doesn’t itch or anything. I’ve heard several rumors about how you can get it, ranging from bathing in well water to sharing towels. I was doing neither of these things in the med hut in Dakar but when I got back to Guinea, I had “the fungus”. You treat it by washing the affected area with dandruff shampoo. It makes your towel smell like sulfur for months after.

THIS time after getting back from Dakar, I am having a host of skin issues. First there was the obvious second degree burns around my eyes, but I can’t blame Dakar for that, only my own idiocy. Then there are the two sores that won’t heal – one on each heel, one of which has been there for like 7 weeks now. Can’t blame Dakar for those either. But I CAN blame Dakar for the multiple staph (maybe?) infections and the weird lump in my armpit that Dr. Dawn today told me I should start taking antibiotics for. Woo. Hoo.

I blame Dakar.

So only one of the staph infections is still rearing it’s ugly head, the others have all gone away pretty easily. This lump thing though? I started to notice a lump under my skin in my armpit as we were leaving Senegal. It has gotten steadily larger since then. And redder. And firmer. And more painful. Last night I was tossing and turning all night just trying to find a comfortable position. I woke up in pain several times throughout the night. I can’t really close my arm because it hurts and if I have managed to close my arm, opening it back up hurts, too. Lifting my water bucket hurts. Sitting around doing nothing hurts. So I finally texted Dr. Dawn and described the issue and she was like, “well, I’m going to see you on Monday (going to the dentist again YAY!!!), but you should start taking your erithromicin and put warm compresses on it 3x a day.” I’m like awesome.

I blame Dakar.

At least this erithro will clear up any other lingering skin issues that are still hanging on. So there’s something, at least.

I’m going to the dentist on Monday because my upper right molar, second from the back, is giving me sporadic pain, mostly when chewed on. I was just going to avoid dealing with it because ignorance is bliss, but I was already talking to Dr. Dawn about other stuff so I mentioned it. It has a crown. Which means it has been root canaled. Which means it shouldn’t be giving me any more trouble. So for a minute I’m thinking it’s suspicious, then I run my tongue up over my gums and I feel it. This tiny, grain-of-sand sized little bump. And it all comes flooding back. This has happened before. A tooth that I had root canaled years ago suddenly had this same little bump on the gum. The bump kinda grew and I kinda ignored it until I was in to see my dentist and she noticed it. And sent me to my root canal dentist. Who told me I had an abcess. Or something. Basically the root canal wasn’t done super good and an infection had been festering inside the roots for YEARS since I had it done. The bump was pus trying to get out. It was deteriorating my jaw bone. Gross. So there are three options for dealing with this: do the root canal again, cut open the gums from the top and clean it out that way, pull the tooth and get an implant. None of these are cheap. I ended up going with option A. Which did not have a guarantee of working. I don’t know if this is the same tooth or not, but I think this time I’m going to go with option C. And take my dental issues to a whole new level with an implant.

But hey, maybe that’s not what’s going on, here. If it is, they’ll send me back to Dakar. And we all know what happens to me when I come back from THERE.

Someday I’ll have a clean bill of health again. Someday.

But while I’m waiting, I’ll still blame Dakar.

Well, Happy February!

2010-02-24T01:17:00.001Z

So I was gone for most of the month of February. I started in Segou, which is Corinna’s site, for Le Festival Sur le Niger, which is a nearly week-long music and cultural festival on the banks of the Niger river. It was really fun. Aside from there being a soft serve ice cream machine (!!), there was lots of music and dancing, traditional masks, Touaregs and all their jewelry and other wares, an awesome keke lady, cheap beer, fried egg pockets and plates upon plates of delicious, fresh seafood…or…riverfood as it may be. Oh, did I mention the swimming pool? That, too.

My favorite stuff had to be the various mask exhibitions, where dancers would wear the masks (and full-length costumes) from their region of Mali and do a traditional dance, often with women singing traditional songs. One had a giant monkey costume. It was crazy! Also the Touareg dancing was really cool. I didn’t really buy anything because festival prices are so inflated and there were TONS of toubab tourists around who are willing to pay those prices, but there was lots of awesome hand-woven fabric, jewelry, pre-sewn clothes, bags, carvings, art…you name it, somebody was selling it. I did get hosed on one bracelet I bought from a Touareg that I thought was pure silver but turns my wrist green and that was pretty much what turned me off from trying to buy anything else. So I spent my money on fish and beer. I’ll get to carry that around on my hips for weeks, at least!!

So after a fun week in Segou with Corinna and Mark (and the couple dozen other volunteers who filtered in and out), we headed to Bamako to catch the bus to Dakar, Senegal for WAIST (West African International Softball Tournament). The bus ride there really wasn’t that bad. I was on a bus that we had completely bought out, so it was all volunteers and shockingly it was a tame ride! Phil came from Burkina which was awesome. They ran out of homestays this year so we didn’t get to have a nice relaxing expat house to stay in, but we did get to sleep on foam mattresses on the floor of an empty Peace Corps-owned house with about 50 other Mali volunteers. Definitely better than paying for a hotel.

So I played on the Refugees, which was a team made up of Guinea and Mauritania evacuees and one orphan volunteer from Togo. So I got to see most of the Guinea transfers who stayed in West Africa (Benin – Mary and Scott, Senegal – Katie and Ian, The Gambia – Kris, Burkina Faso – Phil and John). We lost our first two games on the first day and then the second day we were playing one of the Mali teams and we decided to jettison the softball thing and play kickball with a volleyball instead. Most. Epic. Game. Ever! I’ve never laughed so hard. Between our water gun sniper shooting people getting to first base, the no-shoe rule, Mary on one of our teammate’s shoulders rounding bases while eating a hotdog and drinking a beer (they fell down on the way to third, but managed to save their drinks – the hot dog was an unfortunate casualty), kidnapping the other team’s runner on third, throwing a giant inflatable softball at the first base-man to prevent him catching the kickball for an out, running the wrong way around the bases, rushing the pitcher’s mound when somebody got a kick, yelling our rally cry (“we’re here, we’re homeless, get used to us!”), kidnapping the Mali team’s (Desert Kawboys) horse-on-a-broomstick mascot, and the real brilliance – our game opener – releasing a cage full of birds on the pitchers mound hoping that maybe some of them would make it back to our original Peace Corps homes, it was insanity.

We won rock to scissors. No one knew the score but the WAIST officials needed to say who won the game so the coaches went to the mound and played rock-paper-scissors for the win. At the end, the Mali team said it was the best game they could have asked for. Us, too.

Sports aside, I spent a lot of time at the American Club pool, taking hot showers, eating more soft serve ice cream, cheering on other teams (The Gambia won the tournament for the social league), eating nachos (!! With jalapenos!!!!), going out for dinners and attending all the WAIST-sponsored parties. Most nights I only got like 3 hours of sleep. But it was worth it!!

After WAIST we (me, Corinna, Mark, Danielle and Scotty) stayed in Dakar an extra day to go out to Goree Island which is an island right off the coast that was once a waypoint in the slave trade. The Maison du Esclave (where they kept the slaves before putting them on the slave ships) was a haunting place, but the rest of the island is really touristy and I didn’t feel much like sticking around. But if you want to have a nice dinner on the water and buy some cool African art, Goree Island is the place for you.

The next day we headed out to Toubab Djialah. Best decision I’ve ever made in my life. It’s just this small village on the beach about an hour or so outside of Dakar, but it was AMAZING. We stayed at this hotel called Sobo Bade. It is run by this old French lady who speaks English and costs $8 a night for dormitory-style accommodations (but since the dorm was full, me, Scotty and Danielle got a private three-bed room for the same price). It was right on the beach, had a quaint little restaurant, tons of cats (owner must like cats), an awesome deck that looked out to the water with nice lounge chairs, a good, cheap restaurant right down the beach where we ate several times (Chez Baby’s), and great seashell hunting. I spent most of my time lounging and eating. The shrimp was AWESOME at Chez Baby’s and so was the calamari we had there the first night. I am becoming quite the seafood connoisseur. The only bad things that happened were I lost my iPod Nano on the beach and the ocean stole my sunglasses. Oh, and I gave myself second degree burns by unwittingly pouring a bucket of scalding hot water over my head (don’t ask). But I was so happy I didn’t even care. It was a great way to end the vacation.

So then came the epic journey back to Mali. We left Sobo Bade at 1pm on Friday. We got to Bamako at 6am on Sunday. It was AWFUL. We will not be getting back on any long distance buses anytime soon. Most of the reason it took so long was that we blew a tire at 3am Friday night in the middle of NOWHERE and wouldn’t you know it, the spare didn’t work. So we were stuck there for SIX AND A HALF HOURS waiting for someone to bring us a tire. Ugh. And then once we were on the road again, for the next 24 hours we stopped at LEAST once an hour for various things, mostly people having to go to the bathroom. I was eventually like, “ok, we’re stopped – EVERYONE off the bus, squeeze out what you got because this is ridiculous we are NOT stopping again in 45 minutes!” But I said it in English so no one understood me.

But we made it back in one piece. So after getting in at 6am Sunday morning, we had to be at Amy’s wedding by 10am. It was at the mayor’s office in some quartier on the other side of the river. It was a PAGAILLE and it was HOT. Amy and Daffe got married along with this other Malian couple (they do it two at a time). I watched standing on the top of a bench. After the ceremony, we went to the party at Daffe’s uncle’s house down the road. Lots of music, dancing, food and traditional stuff. Amy looked GORGEOUS and we were all so happy for her and Daffe. The whole Guinea staff came up to see the wedding so it was awesome to see all of them, too. They brought us pineapples and grapefruits from Guinea.

The real party was that night at the club across the street. We danced it up, had some cake, ate more beef. We left not long after Amy and Daffe did because we were EXHAUSTED. We went back to Raven’s and CRASHED.

And now I’m back to site. Which is great because I get lots of sleep here. But hot season is definitely upon us so I sweat A LOT. I’m sweating right now! I wish I had a fan. And, like, electricity to run the fan. That would be sweet. Everybody’s doing good here and I got my table today (YAY!!!). One note of bad news, though, the petite who does my laundry, Setu, is in Bamako. I’m not sure if it’s temporary or not but sadface I will have to do my own laundry tomorrow. Although in all likelihood when they see me doing it they will laugh and assign me a new petite.

C’est la vie.

One Down, Who Knows How Many To Go?

2010-01-29T01:16:00.000Z

So remember that time (yesterday) when I said I was expecting Magellan to kill mice and leave them on my shoes? Turns out he (she?) eats them whole.

So I was coming into my house after the sun set and I lit my lantern and all of a sudden I see Magellan shooting across the floor and catching something behind one of my suitcases. I was hoping he was fighting one of the big mice but when I saw how easily he subdued whatever it was I thought it was just another cockroach (which he has also been diligent about catching and eating – dude needs his protein). But then I looked over there, and hanging out of my little kitten’s mouth is a long tail on one side and a little mouse face from the other. It wasn’t one of the really big mice, just a small one, but he caught one!! It was still alive and squirming around so I just decided to let Magellan do his thing and went back to what I was doing. Then I heard the crunch crunch crunch and I’m like “gross” and I look back over and all that’s left is the tail, still whipping around on the ground. Which he promptly ate. The frigging mouse must have still been squirming around in his BELLY, he swallowed that thing so fast!

So. At least I know I’ve got a hunter on my hands.

Also today I wrestled the family dog. My family thought this was CRAZY and I was kind of regretting doing it because that dog is DIRTY and she wanted to play MUCH longer than I did (luckily my bath quickly followed this filthy foray). But it’s rare to see her happy with her tail wagging, so I just kept on wrestling her, sitting in my chair. That’s one thing I’ve always liked doing: wrestling dogs. Especially big ones. She is not particularly big or strong so I beat her soundly without ever getting out of my chair. But she has spirit!

I wonder how big Yogi is now. He was fun to wrestle even when he was small because he was such a squirmer. And such a happy dog. Sniff, tear – I miss that little monster.

Night Time

2010-01-28T01:15:00.000Z

So at night is when a village really comes alive. Everybody’s done working for the day, everybody’s had their bath and their dinner and it’s time to just hang out.

I usually shut myself up in my house after my dinner, read or write for a little while and fall asleep early, when I can still hear little kids running around outside my house. So as I am doing this very thing, paging through The Kite Runner, I hear a bunch of clapping and singing. So eventually I was like ok, I gotta go see what these people are doing. I wish I had an invisibility cloak or something because whenever I go out there it causes a ruckus, especially at a time I am not usually around (like after dark), and I just wanted to watch. But as I have said before, never think you can just go somewhere and stand in the back as a silent observer. It pretty much never happens.

So some of the older women are pounding millet. Which is, like, an all-day, all-night activity around here. I took a few drives with the pestle but my hands are definitely not pestle-worthy, so the women always laugh and take the pestle away after a few strokes. The men are all gathered around the little TV hooked up to the car battery watching a soccer game. I don’t know who was playing, but soccer players are HOT…has anyone else ever noticed this before? Hmm. All the little boys were playing some sort of game and they all had sticks. I tried to teach them to high five but they weren’t getting it so I gave up quick. And then out by the well were all the young women and girls. Singing, clapping and dancing.

Right when I walked up I think they were just about to disperse but then somebody calls out “Oumou Diarra!” and everybody rushes back to the circle. They want me to dance but I’m not comfortable enough here yet to dance. I would have done it in Santou, but I had already lived there for 8 months. It’s one thing to make a fool out of yourself in front of people you consider your friends, an entirely different thing to do it in front of people who are still strangers. So I succeeded in being able to stand in the circle and just watch. One of Yusuf’s daughters was leading the singing, and then everybody clapped rhythmically based on the song she was singing. The two oldest girls were doing most of the dancing and kicking up such a dust cloud it could be seen even in the moonlight.

I stayed for a couple of songs, then wandered back to my house, where I swear I hear the high pitched chirp(?) of a mouse pretty much nightly. Magellan hears it too and is curious about it but has yet to get into a fistfight with said mouse. One of these days I’m gonna find one of those fat bastards laid out on my shoes in the morning, a proud Magellan standing watch over the carcass.

A girl can dream.

TERMITES!

2010-01-26T01:15:00.000Z

So when I got back from BKO this last time I noticed that my PACA book (if you are a PCV, you know it well) had been munched on. I blamed this on mice. But just now, I finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and went to pick up The Kite Runner, and IT was munched on! Then I saw all the little white bugs crawling on the book. TERMITES!!! So I start picking up all my books and papers, which have been unceremoniously dumped in a corner. Half of them have been munched. Some to the point of actually affecting readability. So I cleared them all out and swept the area and the chickens had a field day with the feast of squirming termite bodies that landed outside my door.

One Hundred Years of Solitude might be the worst affected so I am reading that next to get the book OUT of here. I’m going to put the rest of the books in plastic bags and hope that deters the literary feast they have become.

So I’m already knowing that my two pieces of wooden furniture are not going to make it very long. But hey, if they can just make it another year, I won’t care.

But I do want them to stop eating my books.

RIP Philip

2010-01-25T01:13:00.000Z

So my neighbor Yusuf, who I hang out with sometimes and drink tea with, came by this morning saying something about my other chicken, Philip, being sick. And that he wanted to buy him. Or something. So he was like how much? And the chicken was a gift from the chef du village so I didn’t feel right about taking money for him so I just said to give me some piment out of his garden and he could have him. And he was like no, you don’t understand, come over to my house, “she” speaks French.

So I go over there. And there’s this rather coiffured lady sitting in the chair there, making herself some coffee. This is what most of Yusuf’s clients look like. Usually educated, from out of town, well-dressed, well-fed, nice coiffure. See, Yusuf is the marabout, or, witch doctor, we would probably call him in America. And he’s like, KNOWN apparently, so people come from all over the place to have him do his thing for them.

So I thought the lady just wanted to buy my chicken for dinner. But after sitting there for awhile, while Yusuf was drawing out a benediction on this tombstone-shaped piece of wood, I was like, dude it isn’t right to sell this chicken when he was a gift from the chef du village and I could give it to my family and they could have some protein, right? I really didn’t want to take money for him and would REALLY rather have the family eat him.

So after Yusuf had caught the chicken and tied his legs (it was clear he was sick, he was dripping liquid out of his mouth and his top waddle was turning black), I told them I didn’t feel right about selling the chicken. And they were arguing with me for a minute and then she said she would replace the chicken. And I’m like well if you can replace him, why don’t you just buy a different one at the market?

So through all this confusion, she’s finally like, but I need a WHITE chicken, NOW. And I’m all like why the heck do you need a white chicken? And she was like, you don’t believe, I don’t want to tell you. And that’s when I realized they needed the white chicken to do whatever marabout ritual Yusuf was going to do for her. It HAD to be white, and mine was the best one around, being fairly large, male, and (unarguably) very pristine white. So then I was like OH. Definitely didn’t want to mess up the poor lady’s sacrifice. So I said, well, if you replace him you can kill him.

So Yusuf hung him upside down on his moto handles and hung his big knife next to him. I wish I had a picture of this. Then he gave me 100 francs and told me to go buy tea. And I was like do I look like a petite to you? I ended up giving it to a petite to go get the tea (and then I gave her a bon bon). Then Yusuf and the client got on his moto and went off into the bush with my chicken.

Sorry Philip. You would have died today anyways.

So when they got back Philip was all dead and she cleaned him and started to make food. I was like oh, so he’s going to get eaten after all. I had like three lunches. The first was the toh Yusuf’s (first) wife made, and she makes a pretty good toh sauce. I wouldn’t have eaten it at all if it wasn’t considered rude, though, because Sita was making BASI for lunch and I friggin love basi so I wanted to save as much room in my tummy as possible. So I ate a few handfuls of the toh. Then a petite brought the basi over and I started to eat that. Yusuf had a few handfuls of that and I was going to enjoy more of it but he took it away and told me I had to eat Philip with them. She (her name was Ami) had made this spaghetti dish with oil, garlic, onions, tomatoes, Maggi and black pepper, and then had cooked Philip up on top of that. So then I had to eat THAT. It was tasty. But I still looked longingly at my unfinished basi, which after all of that I was clearly too full to enjoy any more of. When we were done eating, the rest of the family got to dig into it, including the kids, so everybody got a little protein out of it anyway.

So the bottom line is I ate both of my chickens this week. But both of the families who feed me got some protein out of it, so a good sacrifice in all.

Petite Setu washed all my dirty clothes today, including my Dakar purse, which was FILTHY. So that’s good. Every time she washes my clothes, the girls ask to have certain articles. And I’m like look when I leave I will leave all my clothes for you guys. But for now, I need these clothes! Especially my swimsuit, which is the article they asked to have this time.

So I usually give her bon bons (candy) for doing the laundry because her mom won’t let me pay her. But today as we were hanging up the finished wash, she asked for “macaroni” which refers to any kind of pasta, really. And I was like I don’t have any, which is actually not true, because I do have one or two macaroni and cheeses hanging around but if she thinks I’m giving her a box of Trader Joe’s shells and cheese she is MISTAKEN. She says I can get it at the boutique. I ask how much it is and she says 350 CFA, which is like, less than a dollar. And I’m like fine, because I originally wanted to pay her like 500 CFA each time she did my laundry, so it’s still a deal! I tried to just give her the money but she was like no, you have to go with me and buy it, I guess because if I just gave her the money it would be like I paid her and she bought spaghetti with her earnings. This way I could just give her the spaghetti. So after we get the spaghetti she’s like come over to my house, let’s make it! And I’m like crap. I am SO not hungry right now after the mess of food I ate for lunch and I really want to take a nap and I have no desire to cook right now. Because at this point I am thinking she wants me to make an American sauce for it. But it turns out she didn’t, she did the cooking, she just wanted me to sit there with her while she did it and then eat with her.

So here’s how they make spaghetti: they put the “oil” (which I am now suspecting is shea butter) in the pot and let it melt. Then they mash up tomatoes with their fingers. Then they put the tomato skins in the oil, leave it for a minute. Then they put some water in, then the rest of the tomato stuff, then more water. They let that cook awhile and then they add the Maggi cube (MSG) and about a salt shaker’s worth of salt (I’m feeling the heart attack already). Then they break up the spaghetti into little inch and a half long pieces and put that in. It cooks in the sauce until it’s basically just lightly coated and has soaked up lots of salt and water. Then you eat it. It’s not bad tasting at all, but it sure as shit is not healthy. But the kids were all really excited about it.

That’s one thing: they do know how to share here. I mean, Setu earned that spaghetti fair and square, but instead of keeping it all to herself she shared it with like 10 other kids, plus me and her mom. I’ve noticed they do this with candy I give them, too. Like to the point of sharing a lollipop, which is gross, but hey, they’ve got the spirit.

I also taught all the kids sitting around watching us cook how to cover their mouths when they cough, because they kept coughing on me. I was like CUT THAT OUT I’ve got a big month ahead of me and I don’t wanna be sick for it!!

So we’ll see if that sticks.

Also, kind of a non-sequitor, but I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and I had asked her to send me one of my textbooks from college that I had never read and she was like, “I don’t know how you got all those A’s, you never read shit.” And it’s true. I would be surprised if I even got through three of the at least a hundred books I was assigned in college (she also said it made her feel so good that she had spent all that money on those books – but in my defense, I didn’t KNOW I wasn’t gonna read them at the time of purchase). One I know I finished was for a class on violence vs. non-violence. It was called Remains by William Crapser. It was a firsthand account of the Vietnam War and a great book. But I couldn’t for sure name any others that I definitely got all the way through. Because I probably didn’t. I should have brought more of them to Africa with me, because I read all the time here. And then I could review my education and when I get back maybe put it to better use. Maybe.

Back in the Saddle

2010-01-23T01:12:00.000Z

So I think many Peace Corps Volunteers could describe the apprehension one has when returning to one’s site. We all know that once we get there, we will be content. Kids will come running down the path to carry our stuff, babbling in a language we don’t particularly understand, huge smiles on their faces (how did they even know I got back??). We will slip right back into it, we will remember what we love about living alone in a small African village. It’s the pulling yourself away from your ExPat life that’s the hard part and that is exemplified by the simple packing your stuff and getting your ass to the taxi gare. Once you are comfortably (question mark?) seated in your taxi on your way home, you sigh a big breath of relief and resign yourself to the ride, where you have nothing but time to think. In fact, my taxi ride is even too short for my thought process now. In Guinea the shortest taxi ride I might feasibly take would be about 2 hours. But for the most part, I was looking at a 4-6 hour ride (if Allah decided to bless the taxi) or if I was truly lucky, a 12-14 hour stint. Which gives you a LOT of time to think. And I really enjoyed it. Guinea is such a beautiful place. To just sit in that taxi, thinking, looking out at some of the most beautiful sights I’ve had the pleasure of routinely experiencing in my life – that’s a blessing, my friends.

My taxi ride here is an hour to an hour and a half. Not exactly the same thing. I barely get that puppy grinding before I find I’m already home. It’s a relief and a disappointment, but mostly a disappointment.

And it’s a paved road. What’s with that?

Anyway. When I got back, Hawa was bursting to tell me that the three-legged puppy had regained use of his injured fourth leg. Both he and the grown family dog were there to greet me right when I got back and Gimpy just waltzed right into my house as soon as the door was open, like he owns the place. I thought maybe the little guy would have forgotten me, but no, his butt was wagging a million miles a minute when he saw me and the first thing he did after sniffing around for the leftovers bowl was plop down on his blanket and take a nap. I keep telling him, “you are not my dog! This is not your house!” Apparently he doesn’t speak English.

I haven’t gotten my cat back yet, though. That’s kind of weird. I hope Magellan hasn’t kicked the bucket like the last one.

So shortly after I got back, Drissa came by, and then the teenage boy who lives across from me who never speaks and whose name I don’t know came to the door holding my black chicken, Chester. He said that Chester is sick. But I didn’t know what he wanted me to do about it. I saw what he meant when he put Chester down and he sort of drunkenly wandered around, making weak cockadoodledoos constantly. That is not chickenlike behavior. So I told Drissa to tell the family to eat him for dinner. So we did. They originally brought his hacked up carcass to me in a bowl but I was like just put him in the sauce, dude. RIP Chester. I hope we all don’t get Mad Chicken Disease now. That would suck.

My first momma Seli brought me a big bag of peanuts in a 25 kg World Food Programme rice sack. I was like WTF. I think she said some woman sent them over as a gift to me but I will have Drissa and/or Khalifa confirm this story for me the next time they are around. I know I won’t eat the peanuts. I’d rather have them made into sauce. So tomorrow I’m going to give the peanuts to the family and tell them to make me a friggin na tiga dege (peanut butter sauce) with tomatoes. Since it’s tomato season.

So while I was living Life #2 in BKO this last week, Raven pointed out some Moringa trees that were seeding and so I hopped out of the car and proceeded to do seed collection along with a much taller counterpart (I would have collected like a third as many pods without his help). Then we made Ousmane help us sensibilize the locals who were watching me like I was a crazy person about Moringa, it’s uses and benefits. Our (non-Peace Corps) friends looked at us like we were crazy while we were sensibilizing. But that’s my f-ing job and I am sooooo putting that on my quarterly report. DIFFERENCE MADE.

My plan is to create a tree nursery with these seeds and then go around to all the compounds and plant 2-3 in each one and explain why they should protect it and let it grow and then USE it. Gotta find a good spot for a pepiniere. If I get them open-root planted before I leave for the Segou Music Festival they should be a decent size when I get back. And I could start outplanting them in March. Go me.

So Drissa is going to put together a meeting to decide what kind of latrine we want to build at the school and I will get that proposal written while I am in Segou. My pump proposal was accepted by the PC authorities and forwarded to the funding authorities, so here’s crossing my fingers for funding.

Gimpy wants to spend the night in here. But he is farting like nobody’s business so I might have to kick him out. He’s so much bigger than he was a week ago!! Nowhere near as beautiful as Yogi, though. Just saying.

Meeting. Projects.

2010-01-14T13:27:00.000Z

So today there was a big meeting between the Chef du Village and all the Chefs du Famille at the dugutigi’s house. It was to discuss what projects they want me to undertake in the light of the fish farm being very difficult and facing the problem of water.

So they decided they want to have a pump at the school and also a latrine. I think these are great projects. I think we’ll do the latrine first because it is a lot easier and cheaper. The pump is going to be hard. Expensive. Haoua said she sent me past budgets/proposals for these types of projects so I will have a jumping off point.

They want to get started working on it like right away, like next week, and I had to explain that if I have to find money for it, getting the money is going to take a little bit of time. Especially for the pump, because it will be so expensive I will have to do a PCPP project for it and that usually takes like 4 months to get enough donations. Then another month or two to actually get the money. THEN we can dig the pump. Le sigh.

But the latrine I think we can start pretty quickly. I mean, they can at least dig the hole, even if we have to wait a bit to get the money to buy the concrete and whatnot.

They haven’t entirely given up the idea of the fish farm, though. So…we’ll see what happens with that. Drissa also said there are a bunch of wells that are broken, and we can definitely do something about that so I’m going to push to get started on that maybe while we are waiting for the money to come in for the pump.

Hey, look, I might actually get some projects done!! Fancy that.

I’m headed back to Bamako tomorrow to look over the aforementioned project proposals and also to meet with Chris about a potential Water & Sanitation video he has the idea to shoot. And I’m totally going to make nachos. Or SOMETHING I can put sour cream on. I haven’t had sour cream in ages.

I also cleared my February vacation plans with my homologue and my supervisor, and Haoua, so that’s ready to roll. Have I mentioned these plans before? I’m going to the Segou Music Festival aka “Le Festival Sur le Niger” Feb 3-7 and then hanging out for a day or two before it’s time to head to Senegal for WAIST. Then we are going to stay a few extra days in Senegal and do some touristy stuff before coming back and hitting Amy’s wedding. So I will finally start using some of my accrued vacation days. Haven’t even used one yet and I’m almost 14 months in.

Huzzah!

Baseball Comes to Africa

2010-01-12T13:26:00.000Z

So we had another crayon party before lunch. I still don’t get why they all feel the need to fight over crayons and paper – there is plenty for everyone. In the course of one of these fights, the first crayon got broken. I’m actually surprised it took this long!

So after the crayon party I was explaining to Drissa that I am going to Senegal next month to play in a softball tournament (WAIST). He had no idea what I was talking about. Then it occurred to me that among the things that were sent to me from Guinea, I had two baseball gloves and two baseballs! So I busted out the gloves and a ball and after spending five minutes trying to teach Drissa how to put the glove on, we played catch! The kids thought this was really weird. I think Drissa might have thought that catch was baseball. He said he has never seen it before, not even on TV. But he was having fun. Every time one of us would drop the ball there was a mad fighting scramble amongst the children to recover the ball and throw it back to us. I would let them play with the ball and gloves when we are not using them, but the ball is hard and somebody would definitely get hurt. And they’d probably find a way to destroy the gloves.

Like they destroyed my cards. Word to the wise: bring at least 2 decks of cards with you to Africa. One you can lend out to the kids, because they will ask you EVERY DAY. The other you keep for yourself to play solitaire or to play with adults – DON’T LEND THIS DECK OUT! You will regret it.

We had to stop playing catch when a ball I threw hit the screen on my door and separated it from the doorframe, leaving a hole that tomorrow I will try to patch with duct tape.

It was really windy today and the dust was coming into my house like WHOA, so I put up the door curtain and one window curtain that I had had made in Guinea (also made it here and I didn’t even ask for them!). I had never gotten around to putting them up in Guinea because what I wanted them for was to keep petites from looking in my door and windows at me all the time but Yogi proved to be way better than any curtain because with Yogi around they never even dared come past the gate. Problem solved.

The puppy is always wanting to come in my house now. Only two things I don’t like about it: he pees on the floor and he is always trying to eat out of the cat box. Just a fact of life: dogs like to eat poo. Also since his leg is messed up I can’t give him a bath. As soon as his leg is healthy or at least not hurting him I am giving him a bath. With the doggie shampoo my grandma sent me. Speaking of his leg, it is getting better. It used to be that if you touched it at all or if he sat on it he would yelp but now it has to be bent in a certain direction for it to hurt. Of course just as I write this I hear him screaming from out in the courtyard. Somebody must have hit him. In the leg. I don’t really want him to make my house his home but at the same time I’d rather let him stay here until he is healed so they can’t hurt him so easy. Poor little guy. He just tried to crawl through the hole I made in my door screen today. Dude really wants to live here.

Yogi's Alive!!

2010-01-11T13:26:00.000Z

I just talked to Ousmane II! He was in Telimele so we had a good connection this time. The first thing I asked is how is Yogi??? Apparently he was in Telimele getting him his rabies shot. What a champ. Shows you who your real friends are.

Whenever I hear Ousmane’s voice (this is only the 2nd time now), I miss Guinea so much. He is a real friend and it took having to leave before I really realized that. The fact that he is taking such good care of Yogi is testament to that. I think he might have said he might bring Yogi up to me sometime but if not he said I have to come and get him before I go back to America. Not that he wouldn’t keep him if it turned out I couldn’t take him home with me. I wonder if he’s still just as hyper. I wonder if they’ve let him go free in the village and if so how many beatings he has received.

He said that they are doing his marriage to Lundi next week. In true West African fashion, this is about 2 months late (the original idea was it would happen last November). I’m really sad I can’t be there.

It just reminds me how hard it was to make real friends and that by the time I manage to make any real friends here it will be time to go. And there really aren’t too many options for friends since nobody speaks French and my Bambara sucks. This is a very lonely experience.

Anyway it’s really good to know Yogi is still kicking and that he is happy. I really miss that monster.

Another Guinea-fabulous thing that happened today was Adama (trainer) came to my site for a check-in and brought all my stuff that came from Guinea. FINALLY! My big green trunk, two suitcases and a giant rice sack. My family must think I am the patroniest patron because I have so much stuff. And it IS a lot of stuff, comparatively. I am actually myself shocked at the amount of stuff I have acquired here in Africa. I showed up here with 4 bags (2 checked suitcases, a carry-on and a small backpack) and have since acquired what seems like an excessive amount of stuff. How did this happen? Have I really received so many packages from the States? How did I end up with all these clothes? I have like 4 sets of sheets – how did THAT happen? It just occurred to me that Daffe did NOT send my American pillow. Rats!! That’s ok, Scotty gave me a big fluffy pillow she didn’t want. But you know what he DID send? MY MAGIC 8 BALL!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I’m going to go through the clothes and give a big pile of it to my family. They don’t have a lot of clothes so they will probably appreciate some additions, even if they happen to be a little oil or bleach-stained. At least they’re not ripped! That’s a plus!

Oh and my grandma sent crayons, which came with all the stuff today so after giving everybody Werther’s (also courtesy of grandma), I busted out the crayons and some paper and about 20 kids went CRAZY. They were fighting over crayons and I’m like guys…there are 64 crayons and only 20 of you, there’s plenty to go around! But they don’t speak English so the only thing that worked was holding the crayons over my head and doling them out to each little hand one-by-one. Hawa took over being crayon-tigi aka nazi and by some miracle of the universe all 64 crayons ended up back in the box when everyone was done drawing their trees, huts and cars. AND none of them were broken. How about THAT? One kid even drew something and then wrote OBAMA on it. Everyone wanted me to look at what they drew, even if it was just scribbles and give them a personal “a kanyi!” (that’s good!) at least three times. I wonder if I will ever get them to be creative about what they draw. I think they learn to draw a tree, a hut and a car at school so that’s all they think they can make. We’ll have to work on this. In smaller groups. But anyway, grandma, the crayons were a big hit!!! I’ll send you pictures.

Want to know what’s a good diet? Giardia! Or whatever it is that is currently giving me gastro-intestinal distress. You have no appetite! So that fits in well with my goal of shedding a few pounds before WAIST, where I know I’m just going to put it all back on. This illness reminds me of what I had that week in Guinea when I thought I was over-bleaching my water. The first night, especially. Because I vomited all night and had to curl up into a little ball in order to get just a tiny bit of relief. That’s what it was like all week last time. Now I just have no appetite. And my tummy/intestines are always rumbling. And my burps smell like Cheerios (weird, right?). Whatever it is, it’s not from over-bleaching. And I’d put money on it having come from those raw tomatoes I ate those two days that Setu (the petite who does my laundry) brought over. They were already all sliced up and in some sort of dressing, so I just ate them. Don’t tell Traian. Well, he’s not my doctor anymore, so it doesn’t matter what you tell him. Don’t tell Dr. Dawn. But I’m one of those people that just rides stuff out so I don’t have to take any medicine so if it goes away on its own (which giardia can, but amoebas evidently can’t) I consider it a coup.

Oh yeah, so the family puppy? Somebody (not going to name names but momma Seli said it was one of the younger boys) either kicked him or threw him on the ground and his hind leg is all messed up. He hobbles around on three legs with the injured leg pulled up tight and kind of off-looking. Like maybe it is out of its socket or something. But I don’t have the guts to jerk it straight and see if it pops back in. He whimpers. If he falls or accidentally touches that leg to something he screams. He came to my door this morning and pushed it open and just came inside. Probably because I sometimes feed him what Magellan doesn’t eat. I gave him some food (and water, which he drank like he’d been trekking through a desert all day, then proceeded to pee it onto my floor like 3 times) and put the Peace Corps-issue blanket on the ground (which I’ll never use because THIS is cold season and a sheet suffices) and laid him on it. He spent most of his day sleeping on the blanket or trying to eat the cat poop out of the cat box. He wandered out about 4 or so and hasn’t been back. I haven’t named him, I just call him Puppykins. This probably means the family will kill him when I am out of town if his leg doesn’t get better. It won’t be any use to tell them three-legged dogs do just fine in America. Oh well. The circle of life, right?

Anyway. It’s nice to have my stuff, nice to hear Ousmane II’s voice, and nice to know that Yogi is doing well. It definitely could have been a worse day. Except that I had no appetite to eat the peanut sauce momma Setu made for dinner – RATS!

Cats. Fish

2010-01-08T13:25:00.000Z

So Seli is making me give Leif Ericksen back. She gave me a black cat and he was immediately exploring everywhere and quite a nice cat, so I named him Magellan. Then he cried all night long. And all of the second night. I had to get out of bed at like 5am because he was clinging to the window screen, screaming. Had to get him down. Turned out there was another cat outside, which is what was driving him crazy. Another cat that looked just like him. His brother (sister?). In the interest of getting another hour of sleep, I opened the door and waited for the second cat to come inside so they would shut up. He (she?) did come inside. And they immediately shut up. I named him Leif Ericksen.

Well apparently Leif was supposed to be Seli’s cat, and when she found out they were both in my house, she asked for one back. I’m like but they’re so happy together! They’ll just scream for weeks, pining after each other! But my Bambara sucks so I couldn’t explain any of that and told her I’d give one back tomorrow. It’s going to be Leif. Because he’s more skittish. Magellan already likes to purr and sit on my lap while I read, so he stays. It makes me realize how freaking feral that last cat was. I’m not really sad he’s gone.

I think our dog might be pregnant. But I could be totally wrong. If she is, I know I am going to want a puppy. Sigh. Freaking animals!!

Not much else has been going on. I biked around with Drissa yesterday looking at potential sites for this fish farm they want to build. I’m shaking my fist at our APCD and trainer for showing this fish farming stuff to our homologues because now they want to do it and it’s a really expensive and complicated project. And they’ve got their hearts all set on it but the one problem they apparently didn’t think about with any of these potential sites is: water. Where are they going to get the water? This basically cistern is going to need to have its water changed regularly. And that’s a lot of water. Adama (trainer) is coming to my site on Monday so I’m going to discuss it with him. Like if we just dug a well next to it and set up a simple pump maybe we could do it. Have it drain into a soak pit. I don’t know. Personally I don’t think this is a good idea, but it’s the one the village came forward with and the cardinal rule of a Peace Corps project is to do whatever project the village wants to do. If you try to force a project on them, it’s probably not going to be successful. So maybe Adama can help me with this on Monday.

I finished the third Twilight book. I seriously hate Bella. What do Edward and Jacob see in her??? She’s freaking obnoxious and needy and weak and indecisive and insecure and I just want to SLAP her. I blame Stephenie Meyer (the author). Bella doesn’t have to be this awful to still have the same dynamic. I mean, I’m not even rooting for her! UGH! Luckily there is only one book left. Which I will HAVE to read since I’m all sucked into it now. Maybe the movies won’t be as bad. I don’t remember hating Bella that much in the first movie. But that could also be because I like Kristen Stewart. Hmm.

Half-way Point

2010-01-04T13:24:00.000Z

So I have a sixth sense about animals, much in the way I do about babies. My original Malian cat, I think I mentioned, ended up dead when I came back from IST/Christmas. Today, as I returned from my New Years celebration, one of my moms, Seli, presented me with a new kitten. I never named the old cat because I just had a sense he wasn’t going to last. And he didn’t. That’s why he was called kitty. This cat, I have already named. His/her name is Magellan. Because he/she is an explorer and the first thing it did when I put it down in the house was explore everywhere, including finding food, water and the litter box. So I think this cat might stick around awhile.

Today marks 13 months in Africa and is the halfway point of my 26-month commitment to Peace Corps. It both seems like it’s flown by and taken forever. And it seems both like there is so long and not enough time until I get to go home again.

Double Life

2009-12-30T11:29:00.000Z

So one thing that is not really touched upon in many Peace Corps blogs or other writings is the double life we lead as PCVs. There’s your village life, which is the one everybody talks about because it’s so profound and life-changing. And then there’s your expat life, when you spend time with other Americans/expats. Which isn’t very profound at all, but lets you blow off some steam and get your feet clean.

An easy way to distinguish between one’s village life and one’s expat life is a simple evaluation of wardrobe. In my village, I’ve got nobody to impress. So I wear my Macabi skirts or pagnes or my crappy, oversized ripped up dirty jeans (which as I have mentioned before elicits lots of “heeeeeeeeeey!”s from my village). On top, tank tops, stretched from the washboard, occasionally bleach-spotted or oil-stained. And occasionally, if I’ve got one on hand, a complet made of African fabric.

On the other side of my double life, I’ve got my expat clothes. My bedazzled, more fitting jeans (which I plan to de-dazzle tomorrow), cute tops, strapless bras, dresses. All of which I have left at Raven’s house in Bamako because I will never have occasion to wear them in my village so why haul them around?

Another telling sign: prevalence of hair on legs. I always shave my pits but NEVER my legs in my village. But once I’m in expat territory? I bust out the razor. Deodorant, too. I have taken to not wearing it in my village but can’t live without it otherwise. Hair conditioner. Even in those rare moments I wash my hair at site, there’s no way I’m going to use conditioner. Another item I have left at Raven’s.

Entertainment. Site: books, iPod, kids, animals. Expat world: laptops, televisions, internet, movies, iPod on speakers, dancing.

Food. Site: millet. Expat world: pizza and fried chicken burgers with bacon…and a strawberry milkshake.

In Guinea my experience in the expat world was extremely limited. I lived a two day hike away from Conakry (unless I happened to be able to catch the twice-weekly direct car which took 12 hours or so). In Conakry the only luxuries available were Chinese food, so-so ice cream, shawarma and beach bar pizza (accompanied by cold Guiluxe or Skol – well, sometimes cold). I never once went dancing. Nor did I ever go over to the Marine house. Half the time our VCR or DVD player in the house would be broken. But there WAS air conditioning. And hot showers.

Here in Mali, Bamako has a lot more to offer. Not only are there a slew of Chinese places, but there’s the Broadway Café which serves amazing strawberry milkshakes and pretty much whatever diner food your local mom-n-pop serves. There’s Appaloosa, a sub-par but better-than-nothing Tex-Mex restaurant. The Thai place (like heaven on a plate). Daguido’s Italian (quite good). Tons of real bars with beer on tap. Dance clubs. Internet cafes in spitting distance of wherever you’re standing. I’ve never been to the transit house but I bet there’s air conditioning and hot showers. I assume most of these things have sprung up and been successful here due to the sizable expat community. I mean, it’s no Dakar (Senegal), but it ain’t Conakry either.

I think the disparity between these two lives we lead is one reason some people end up ETing (early-terminating). In one sense, you do need it to blow off steam and get away from your village and be an American for a minute, but on the other hand I think some people get too caught up in it if they’re immersed in it too long and they are afraid to go back to their villages or they remember how fun and easy life was in America and just go back. Which is why Conakry was kind of the perfect balance. It had those elements of relaxation and indulgence you need every now and then but not so much that you wanted to stay there forever. When I came back after almost a month in Dakar on med hold, I was afraid to go back to my village, I remember. I was afraid I didn’t know how to live there anymore and that it would be like starting over and that all the tastes of Western delectability I’d been bubbling in for the last month had cooked me to a different consistency, but of course this turned out not to be true. I also thought this the other day as I was coming back from 3 weeks in Bamako. Which also turned out not to be true. You forget how easy it is to slip back and forth between these two lives.

So just remember that, future volunteers: just go back to your site. You won’t regret it.

On another note, Drissa told me today that the first project our chef du village wants us to work on is pisciculture, or fish farming. I was like awesome, that’s the one session I didn’t pay attention to because I was like yeah right. There’s no water. How are we gonna raise fish? Turns out there is some sort of river 5k away that in the rainy season has lots of fish that just pass us by and the dugutigi wants to harness this resource. So. When I get back from New Years and Tiken Jah, on va commencer.

Back at Site...briefly

2009-12-29T11:27:00.002Z

Is it weird to say I missed toh? I was out of my site for three weeks – two weeks for in-service training (my third, awesome) and nearly a week to celebrate Christmas with the other Guinea transfers in Bamako. In that time, there was rice and sauce to be had for lunch at IST (though not particularly delectable versions of said delicacy), but no toh. Even more, I missed basi. Which has yet to make an appearance since my re-emergence in my village.

Yesterday I arrived back at my village in a good, old-fashioned bush taxi. I find bush taxis much more comfortable than the “bashi” mini-buses, since you get to sit facing forward with windows open and can see what is going on in the world outside.

I had kind of been dreading returning to my village (a feeling I never had in Guinea but attribute to my desire to always get back to my dog ASAP – god I miss my dog!!). I hadn’t had a lot of quiet time in the last three weeks, being constantly surrounded by Americans, dinners, running water and a flat screen television. I knew I wouldn’t get any quiet time when I got back, either. And I haven’t. True to form my family has wanted me to be out and around all the time and all I really want to do is catch up on my sleep.

Though I am ITCHING to start a project so when I get back from celebrating New Years I am going to get Drissa on a concerted search for a project the community wants to do. My clock is ticking, I’ve only got a year (and a month) left. Let’s get this show on the road.

So while I was gone there appears to have been a host of birthing activity. There are at least three new cows. Either they were purchased, or they were birthed over the last three weeks. The sheep that was born shortly after I got here is HUGE (at least twice as big as he was when I left for IST). There is also a puppy. And two kittens (my cat apparently died…who knows the circumstances? I reserve the right to use the name Macguyver for a different animal). There are a ton of new chicken chicks. But the one goatlet whose mom was sick right before I was leaving looks kind of sickly (I’m pretty sure the mom died cause I haven’t seen her) and the other goatlet doesn’t hang out with him anymore. Way to shun an orphan, geez! Oh AND there is a baby donkey!!!! Cutest thing ever. I want to touch it. But he’s skittish.

Also, the family dog healed just fine. I was worried her nasty wounds were going to get infected and go septic and kill her because she insisted on laying in the ashy dust of the kitchen hut, pressing the open wounds right into the ground, leg all swollen, but she’s got fresh skin over all the wounds and her leg is a normal size again. So that’s good.

I have two huge mice who think my house is their house. Today I was laying on my bed reading in broad daylight and there they were just frolicking and chasing each other all around the house. I almost threw my book at them.

The family wants me to take one of the new kittens (where did they get them??), but they seem just as feral as the old one was so I don’t know how well it will work out.

So my mom sent me three People magazines from incredibly different periods of time (how did you manage that?) and those were a bit of a hit with everyone, including the kids who insisted on fighting over them which seems dumb because they have all the time in the world to peruse them one at a time if they each want to get a really good look at every single picture. The spread that was the biggest hit was three of those Dancing with the Stars chicks in their underwear talking about how they stay fit. Racy shots. Shocking for the villageois.

So for anybody who was wondering, I spent my Christmas Eve at Raven’s in Bamako, enjoying chicken “Caesar” salad and baked potato bar with a bunch of Guinea transfers. Christmas Day was spent at an Expat house in Bamako, which meant electricity, TV, air conditioning, a real kitchen, etc... It was actually a pretty good Christmas. I’d venture to say the food was better than last Christmas and the not having to avoid falling bullets made it slightly calmer. Slightly.

So I’m headed back to Bamako on Thursday to go to the bank and celebrate the New Year. Then I am going to stay for the Tiken Jah concert on the 2nd (gonna be AWESOME!) and Paul coming into town on the 3rd since he was not around for Christmas. Then I’ll be back again for a month before the Segou Music Festival, WAIST (in Senegal!) and Amy’s wedding! My second bridesmaid-ship (dad’s wedding was first). And I get TWO outfits out of it because African weddings involve costume changes.

4 months until I’m 26. Scary. I’m thinking about celebrating by jet skiing on the Niger River. And making nachos. Or burritos. And margaritas…ok now the wheels are turning.

Cougar for Breakfast aka Happy Anniversary

2009-12-06T09:15:00.000Z

Today is my one year anniversary of living in Africa. One year ago, I arrived at the Conakry airport (having just vomited in the airplane bathroom) and made my way with the rest of my 29-person stage to the Conakry bureau compound, bursting with anticipation, excitement and queasiness. I remember being struck by the filthiness of Conakry – all the trash and dirt and ramshackleness of the whole place. And I remember arriving there a few months later after my MedEvac to Dakar and as I wove through the Conakry night, thinking the word, “home”.

A year later, I now have a whole new home to adjust to.

Today I arrived in Bamako. I went to the Chinese place by her house for lunch and perhaps due to my presence they put on a France 24 in English and among other (sometimes enraging) stories, I found out that Dadis Camara (Guinea’s de facto president and leader of the CNDD) was shot yesterday by the head of his presidential guard (who is accused of being responsible for the Sept. 28 attack in the stadium that left at least 157 dead). Other sources said he was taken to Morocco for medical care by a Burkinabe airplane dispatched from Senegal. Some are convinced he is dead. After all, Conte was dead for about a week before his actual death was announced. Some wonder if Dadis (even if he is alive) will be allowed to fly back into Guinea.

France 24 made it sound like “a flesh wound!” but I don’t know. The problem is that the only information journalists get out of Guinea comes from the filter of the CNDD so no one really knows what’s going on there other than maybe observant, semi-connected Guineans living in the capital.

I don’t know what will happen to Guinea. It depresses me.

Today when I arrived at Madina Marche I was overwhelmed and trying to find a taxi to where I was going and at some point in the mix a Malian police officer waved me over to him. In Guinea, I would have pretended not to see him and hastily walked the other way. But here, I went over to him and he gave me directions to where I was going. Very nice guy. I also ended up eating my Chinese food next to two Malian police officers, one of whom was originally from Guinea, who were very nice. It’s amazing what an effective governing body can do.

So if you were wondering, “cougar for breakfast” refers to Raven’s boyfriend Ousmane’s inability to pronounce “Quaker” (as in oatmeal), so in the morning he will ask “Are we having Cougar for breakfast?” And Raven responds, “only if you go catch it!”

Anyway. Happy Anniversary to me (as melancholy as it may be).

Once Again A Fowl Owner

2009-11-30T09:14:00.000Z

So my family left me alone today. I don’t know if they sensed my hyperventilation yesterday or what. But Setu knocked on the window to give me my bath water at 6:15ish and I went out and got it. I didn’t sleep very well because I kept hearing dogs fighting in the night, the loser yelping for mercy and it not sounding like they were getting it, and I was just imagining that it was our dog who was being ripped apart, already in her weakened state. A couple of times I almost got out of bed and went outside to make sure she was ok. In the morning she was in the same state as last night so at least she didn’t get in any further fights (although today somebody told me it was a person who hurt her yesterday, not a dog; I’m going to investigate this further).

So after my bath they brought me breakfast which was the millet rice type thing with tomato sauce. Then I spent time in my house reading a new book (finished Obama’s book and am now on an inherited book called Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins). Drissa came a little after nine to go over to the village chief’s house. He made me change out of my pants into my Obama wrap skirt. This still annoys me but I go with it.

So we went over to the chief’s house and basically spent four hours sitting around staring at one another. Luckily there was a puppy. So I spent most of my time with the puppy sleeping on my lap or playing with him, or with a small baby in my arms. We had toh for lunch, and I actually had what I believe to be a corn-based toh, first time for that. I gotta say, I kinda think all toh is the same, having had three different kinds. But the sauce was good because it was spicy. Now THERE’S a lady who’s not afraid of piment!!

So after countless shots of tea and lunch and everyone asking why I am not married and will I marry someone from the village (to which I reply if I can have 4 husbands sure, I could waste one on a villager – they find this hilarious), we decide to take our leave. I am gifted two chickens. One white one from the chief and one black one from his younger brother. They are both cocks but I guessed wrong at first and everyone laughed because I couldn’t tell the difference. So the black one is named Chester and the white one is named Philip. My family thinks it is weird that I named them but they are used to my affection for animals now so they weren’t really surprised. My dad tied purple strips around their legs so everyone will know they are my chickens. Luckily this time they don’t have to live in my house!!

So when I got home my family said my phone had been ringing and I had 6 missed calls from 3 different numbers: my dad, a private number and some number I did not recognize. Soon after I got back the private number rang again and guess who it was: Ousmane II! The connection REALLY sucked so I did not get to talk to him at all really other than to say “ca va???” I really wanted to ask how Yogi was but in the three times he tried to call I couldn’t really understand him at all. Nor did I get a number for him so I couldn’t call back. Maybe he will try again another day and I can get a number for him.

But anyway that means two things. First, that Daffe has been to my site and gotten my stuff and delivered my letters (which is how Ousmane II would have gotten my number). This means I might get my stuff at IST! Yay! Second, it means the envelope I gave to the Mali driver who said he would give it to the Guinea driver the night before the last Guinea staff went back to Conakry did so and they gave it to Yama as I had indicated so some of my last requests and the notes for Ousmane II and Balde got out to them (with pictures!) plus the rubber bone I sent for Yogi that I had received in a package from my grandma that was delivered to me here in Mali after evacuation.

So Ousmane II is now the proud owner of whatever stuff he got out of my house, and I hope he listened to what I said in the letter and gave some stuff to Ousmane and Aissatu Bah but who will ever know.

I really want to go back to Guinea, even just to say a real goodbye and bring people pictures and buy some fabric I never got around to (forestier fabric and leppi, the fabric of the Fouta) and one of those little pestle and mortars you can get outside of Mamou. So if it doesn’t reopen before the end of my service, I might go down there after I COS since Peace Corps can’t tell me what to do after I COS :P.

I still go back and forth on whether or not I want to retake possession of Yogi. I just don’t know if it would work if I brought him back to the States, but if I did everyone would say how beautiful he was and ask what kind of dog was he and think it was really cool that he is from Africa!! In my fantasy they would, anyway. So I don’t know. I guess I will do the research to figure out if I’d be able to take him back to the States with me, anyway, and then cross that bridge when it comes time that I can go back down there. If he is still alive.

So I think I am going to try to go to Bamako on Friday or Saturday to spend some time with Raven and Amy to talk some stuff out and have an opportunity to eat some Chinese food and sour cream (not at the same time) before I have to report to IST.

We’ll see how it goes.

Awful Day

2009-11-29T09:14:00.000Z

Tabaski is like Chanukah: it goes on forever and I don’t get any presents.

Tabaski started on Friday when the sun went down. People stayed up all night. It then went on to Saturday, which was when I thought Tabaski was and thought the whole fete would go down. I mean, that’s when they killed Mr. Sheep. But no. It went on today, too. And I am informed we will continue through tomorrow and that there will be no market in Nossombougou so my plans to buy piment, have keke for lunch with a frozen baggie of bissap juice and spend the afternoon reading over a glass of red wine at the Auberge, flirting with the possibility of the English-speaking Bible Study folks showing up again has been thwarted. This was the first bad news of the day.

So I made a valiant effort today. I got up at 6:30ish, took my bath, and went out into the courtyard with the last 50 pages of Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” unread under my arm. I proceeded to sit out there with the family, do the mass breakfast thing at about 8 with everybody (rice with peanut sauce – SCORE – turns out that was the best part of my day) and stay out there hanging out with the grandmas and stuff until like 1pm. Then mom #1 Seli tells me we are gonna go hang out with the ladies. And I’m like ok fine. It can’t be for that long because lunch is at like 2 (during Tabaski. Normally it is at 12). So we go hang out. I have to take off a little before 2 because I have to go to the bathroom and when I’m done it’s time to eat. But it is disappointing because it is this giant, football sized tuber that is absolutely tasteless all cut up and cooked with stuff (I dunno what) so I don’t eat very much and think longingly of peanut sauce. Or even toh. So then I decide to do some work in my house. I was like, I’ve put in my time today! And I know there’s something going on later because I have a complet for it.

So I go to do dishes and clean up my house and try to get my cat to come down and eat (he does not so I throw pieces of gross meat/fat up to him so he doesn’t frigging starve to death). So just as I’m finishing this mom #2 Abi comes over and tells me I have to come out, NOW. So I’m like ok.

I go out and there are a bunch of ladies sitting around in Moussa’s part of the compound. I was kind of confused at first. They all got up and shook my hand. And they gave me half a rice sack of something (turned out to be peanuts). Turns out they were the ladies delegation sent over from the village chief’s house to saluer me and gove me peanuts. Cause the chief evidently does not make house calls, especially not to see a woman. Seli makes me go put on my complet. Everybody tells me how “a kanji” (pretty) it is and scolds me for not being able to wear the headwrap which is the same freaking size as the skirt. This annoys me. As do the kids trying to get me to pay attention to them by telling me I am ugly (a game that got obnoxious about 5 minutes after it was originally initiated). Yusuf makes some comment about how NOW I am a woman, because women wear skirts, not pants and wearing pants is “a manji” (bad/ugly) which gets on my nerves because I am of the belief that anyone should be able to wear whatever they want whenever they want if it makes them comfortable. In Guinea everyone thought my jeans were “jolie”. I miss that.

The ladies make an appointment for me to go over to the chief’s house and hang out with him tomorrow. Luckily Drissa is going with me for that.

So then I have to walk them out like halfway to the road because that’s polite and this is when Drissa drives up on his dad’s moto and tells me there is no marche tomorrow, which I had REALLY been looking forward to. So I’m all like DAMN! And on the way back to the compound I’m thinking I am going to go relax in my house a little bit and get over the no market thing. But no. There is a new group of ladies waiting to saluer me. This time it is my language tutor Khalifa’s mom and her groupement. And I desperately want to be polite and interesting but I am getting SO SICK of not understanding Bambara and my clothes being pulled left and right and assessed by everyone and their mother (literally) and the kids still calling me ugly and men poking and pulling on me and saying that I am now a woman and I should never wear pants. And I am biting back tears as hard as I can. I have a smile completely frozen on my face. A pained smile. Just trying to get through it.

Bless these ladies they don’t hang around too long either so I walk them out and have to go through saying all the goodbye greeting thingies Seli and Abi are feeding me to say and I am so annoyed with it at this point but I have to say it or I’ll be rude and everyone will be mad. So then I have to go back because two OTHER ladies have come to saluer me.

It was the afternoon of the saluer. Seriously.

So this is Drissa’s mom and another lady (I think). Seli, bless her heart, always says stuff really slow and clear to me to try and help me understand Bambara but sometimes she repeats it even after I understand it and I’m like yes, I get it. Also, if someone calls my name, I can’t just look at them to show them they have my attention. They will repeat my name until I give a verbal indication of my attention. I hate this. And I still want to cry. And there are moments where I almost do, or I get that feeling in my chest like I just want to RUN to my house and slam my door. So they don’t stay very long either and I have to walk them out and THEN there is another party going on with the groupement and Seli makes me go and I want to punch somebody and the only thing that saved me was I said I had to get my water so I had about 2 minutes alone inside my house to do some measured breathing to calm down enough to not cry in front of everybody.

So I go to this next thing. Everyone is all dressed up. Kids everywhere. Tea being made. I try to cheer myself up by making faces at kids.

I don’t generally feel like this unless I am PMSing. And according to my pill pack, I am not. I attribute it to stress.

So eventually I decide I want to go back to our compound for just a few minutes to kind of decompress or see what other people are doing or whatever. So I go back and I sit with the grandmas for five minutes, check out the soccer game a bunch of the younger men are watching on tv, then I go over to pet the dog, because the dog is my friend. As I walk up to her she is laying on the ground panting. I didn’t think this was too strange until I see she is covered in blood. And I’m like WHAT HAPPENED TO MY DOG.

Turns out she got in a fight with some other dog and I hope the other dog looks worse!! A lot of her wounds are minor but she has a couple of really nasty chunks taken out of her and she can’t use one of her legs and I am so sad and angry and I just walk back to my house and get a bucket of water, a bandanna and some soap and go back over to her and try to start cleaning her up. The men laugh at me. I ignore them. She decides she doesn’t want to be cleaned up right this second so she doesn’t let me get much done before she hobbles away on three legs.

So I stand up, get my bucket together, and go back to my house. Where I promptly shut the door and lock it. About 30 seconds later I hear Seli outside calling my name. I hide. She walks toward the court, probably to ask where I am.

When I am satisfied she is gone, I sit on my bed. That’s when the tears come. Not the loud sobbing I was expecting to experience or felt like experiencing today but just some slow pained tears. I get my volunteer handbook to see if it has the number for the whereabouts phone in it because I decide I am going to try and go to Bamako and see Raven tomorrow so she can talk me down. I find the number but just as I do Hawa comes to my window and tells me to come eat. I just grunt at her. She goes away. I pull myself together. Send Raven the text asking if I can spend the night there tomorrow night. Go back over to where the ladies are now sitting around big plastic bowls of spaghetti, the tuber thing and meat. I share a little stool with one of my grandmas. Somebody hands me a baggie of fresh ginger juice with a sprig of mint in it. Somebody hands me a bucket of water and I wash my hand, then we start eating. Seli sees me and comes over. She says that she had gotten together a bowl of food to send over to my house. She looks really understanding, like she saw the dog and knew I would be upset. I just said it was ok and I would eat here, which I did. And after enjoying my ginger juice, silently got up and went back home.

Where I took out all my braids, which had been itching my scalp for days. As I was coming back from a brief tourney of the compound as I was taking out my braids, I see the slow fat mouse. I get really pissed at him and grab the broom. And as he is right by the door I take a swat at him, never expecting to hit him, expecting him to wiggle out under the door. But I DO hit him. So I scream. Mostly from the horror of actually hitting him and seeing a wet spot on the ground and him squirming and twisting on the ground. So I didn’t really want to kill him but kneejerk reaction, I hit him again. Because a quick death is better than a slow one and I would hate to have fatally injured him but then have him die a slow painful death. On the second blow he gets up and skitters away. At my scream the boys outside had come running to the door. They see it is a mouse, and he is hiding between my stove’s gas tank and the wall. I don’t want to hit him again. One of the guys (it might have been Oumarri) comes in with a block of wood and we try to find the mouse, who has now hidden under the gas tank. When I tip the gas tank up he runs out and into my bedroom where Oumarri lunges after him and I hear the crack of the wood on the floor. But when I wheel around and look in, he has missed and the mouse has disappeared down that dang hole where they are getting in and out. Mouse survives. At least for now. Who knows, when I hit him I might have given him a brain hemhorrage or something. He at least “had his bell rung real good” as my dad would say. Maybe he will decide it’s not worth it to keep coming into my house. Maybe his brain is tiny and he’s going to forget all about it before the night is through.

Eventually I had the blessing of a bath with a hair washing. Then I had a laugh. Because when I got back from my bath, the cat was laying on the edge of the plastic so I put a pile of clothes under it and flipped his butt out of the ceiling! VICTORY! I laugh because he looks so shocked every time it happens. He hasn’t climbed back up yet. My bet is he will hang out down here until the sun starts coming up. Which is good, because he’ll scare any mice that come in, and I can rest assured he has had an opportunity to drink water and eat.

So all things considered, I feel better now that I’m going to bed. And I don’t know if I will end up heading to Bamako tomorrow or not. It would be after my hang out session with the chief. I guess we’ll see how I feel after that.

Tabaski 2009

2009-11-28T09:13:00.000Z

Well I just saw my first sheep slaughter. It is actually almost surprising that I have avoided seeing anything larger than a chicken killed since being here. I almost missed it because the kids called me over to see two dogs having sex. But then when I walked back I saw my host dad and his oldest son holding the sheep down, having just slit his throat. So I missed the slitting part, which is often the worst part because that’s when you see the animal fighting for his life, not wanting to die. Which to me is the most awful part of death: seeing something or someone struggle for life in the midst of dying. So they slit his throat pretty thoroughly and he was bleeding on the ground. There was no fanfare, I was the only one even watching. I thought he must be dead but then he started to kick and his body shook and his torso still moved up and down as though he were breathing or some great wave were going through him. His head hung limp and lifeless but his body still fought. It took a couple of minutes like that for him to actually die. Then they strung him up by his back legs to drain out the rest of his blood. I thought I was fine but then I felt sick to my stomach and almost like I might vomit so I went back to my house. Where I was promptly interrupted with the daily invitation to go have tea from Yusuf. I’ll go over there later.

So I don’t even want to see a cow slaughter. I can’t even imagine. There are volunteers who want to actually kill a cow themselves. I’m not going to name names but you know who you are! I don’t have that in me. I mean, in the States I am a freaking vegetarian. I don’t think I could even stand to watch a fish flip around on the deck of a boat, struggling to get back in the water. When I find mice struggling for their lives in a bucket of water, I have an uncontrollable urge to scoop them out and save them, even though I hate them thoroughly when they treat my house as their own all night. I am sometimes even sympathetic to ants or spiders who run for their lives when I start killing their friends.

So basically, I don’t know how much of our Tabaski sheep I will be able to stomach eating. That’s another thing I have fleetingly thought in the past: if you couldn’t kill it yourself, you shouldn’t eat it. It’s almost like cowardice in a way. I don’t know. I never had to deal with these moral dilemmas in the States because I didn’t so much as eat gelatin or lard (no marshmallows – imagine life without marshmallows! I have lived it…and still am, there are no marshmallows in Mali).

Anyway. Last night they stayed up pretty much all night. Yesterday evening as I was sitting by the cook fire reading my Water and Sanitation training manual (no, seriously, I was reading it – I am sooooo the model volunteer), I started to feel a little bit of a sore throat. I was like GREAT. And then remembered I don’t have so much as a vitamin C supplement, let alone Echinacea, Emergen-C or Elderberry (the things I rely on to keep me from getting sick when I start getting the first signs). That’s all in Guinea. There aren’t even oranges here. So I went to bed at 9ish or so but then got up at midnight to see what was going on, which wasn’t much – it was just people watching TV, listening to cassette tapes, sitting around fires, and cooking. The kids were all sleeping. So I hung out for like 45 minutes and went back to bed. And was then woken at 4:30 in the morning by a flashlight through my bedroom window and someone yelling at me to come eat. I am not very receptive to being jarred awake, A. B. I hate it when people look in my windows or try to talk to me through my window. C. I am sick (sore throat just kept getting progressively worse all night). D. I am tired because even the sleeping I HAVE done hasn’t been good because of all the radios and chatter. So I put my sheet over my head and told them to go away in English. Which they eventually did, after discerning that I was “full” and not going to come eat. Then a couple of minutes later I dragged myself out of bed because I told myself I should at least go see what was going on, even though there’s no way I could have eaten that early anyway. So I got dressed and went outside and it was completely deserted. I have no idea where everybody was, doing this eating. So a little annoyed, I just went back to bed and got up at my usual 6:30am when my bath water arrived.

It was a sort of riz gras for breakfast with a big chunk of meat (I think beef), a piece of bread and a cup of ginjam (ginger juice, which I am not a huge fan of but hot it was nice on my throat). A lot of people were bringing bowls of food over and putting them in one of the grandmas’ rooms. Soon after that, the most part of the women’s group came over and everybody ate again. I was full, so I didn’t eat, though I would have if there had been some basi or peanut sauce to be had, but it was all the riz gras-like thing I had just eaten so I abstained.

So then I just hung out while people were pounding millet and cooking and whatnot and that’s when they killed the aforementioned sheep. Then I went to my house for a little while but one of my moms came and got me and said we were going somewhere ELSE to pound millet. I’m not entirely sure what this was about, but the whole groupement went to this person’s house and pounded millet and pulled water. And it wasn’t even like it was a poor family, or a family that didn’t have enough women, it was just some family.

Of course right when we walk in I see their dead sheep hanging from it’s feet from their shade hangar. A man and a teenage boy are cutting its skin off. GROSS. Then they cut its head off. Then they start gutting it. And of course the chair they have sat me in is facing this whole display. Then they decide that I am sitting in the sun and need to go sit under the hangar so now I have the distinct privilege of sitting right next to the being-chopped-up sheep. Poor guy.

So after this we all go put on our first complets so we are dressed for lunch and after lunch we go hang out with the groupement and make tea and whatnot.

I don’t know, it actually wasn’t that eventful of a day. But I suppose it’s how they might see our Thanksgiving or Easter: you get a new outfit and go to Church on Easter (well, some people), you hang out with your friends and family all day and don’t work, and you eat a ridiculous amount of food ensemble. Kind of the same thing. Without the football. Actually, come to think of it, there WAS some soccer watching going on!! So holidays are basically the same thing everywhere.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T09:12:00.000Z

I hope yours was more eventful than mine. I spent the day all on my own prerogative, reading Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”, learning to make basi with Sita (they call it “cous-cous” but I call it millet sawdust with a delicious bean sauce made of water, beans, peanut butter, Maggi cube and salt – could definitely be made more nutritious with some tomatoes and onions but hey, it’s got protein!), eating basi (after the sheep spilled all my sauce while I was washing my hands and getting a piment), napping, cleaning my house, cutting my toenails, picking up my Tabaski clothes from the tailor (I am SHOCKED he got everybody’s clothes done, he is the only tailor in town and pretty much EVERYBODY wants at least one new outfit) and the coup de grace: enjoying a packet of Easy Mac and a tootsie roll pop.

I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do today, like have to entertain people or study Bambara. So in that sense it was a holiday. But I did not end up making a holiday meal and I am going to bed with a stomachache. Christmas better be more exciting.

Yesterday my cat decided to shimmy up one of the big tree trunk poles holding my roof up and camp out in the black plastic ceiling. You can tell where he is because it makes the plastic dip down. But he makes me angry because he scratches holes into the plastic and can’t get down so he meowed all night last night, yet wouldn’t let me help him down. This morning he was sleeping on the edge of the plastic above where I hang my purse, so I opened the purse and let it hang open and then flipped him out of the plastic and he just happened to land in the purse, looking very confused, then rocketed onto the bed where he got stuck in the mosquito netting. All of which was very amusing for me. When I got him loose, he hid and ate and then I watched him climb back up into the plastic! Where he currently still is. If he starts complaining that he can’t get down tonight I am going to poke him with the broom. Also the mice he is supposed to be scaring off are NOT scared off and one particularly fat one has been spotted for the last couple of days. Cat not doing his job. I think he will probably disappear when I am at IST anyway. So I am not going to name him unless he is still around when I get back (why waste a good pet name?).

ANTS!

2009-11-20T09:12:00.000Z

So I have an ant problem at my house. They are always all over my stove, even when my stove is clean (which I now have to be very meticulous about and do several times a day to keep the ants to a minimum). They are also just generally all over the place, but I don’t care if they are on the walls or the floor, I only care when they get into my stuff.

Like my water filter. Tonight as I was filling my water bottle I noticed little black things coming out of the filter along with the water. I held the bottle up. Sure enough, a couple dozen dead ants were swirling around my bottle. I opened the filter. Dozens of dead ants floating around in what would have been my nice clean water. So sometime between last night and tonight they all found their way in there. The only way to get into the clean part of the filter is through this little tiny hole near the top that is there to relieve the pressure as water exits the bucket. It is evidently large enough for an ant to get in. Or several dozen. Who then plunge to their watery deaths. In my clean water.

So I am pissed because I was all ready to brush my teeth and settle down under my mosquito net with Cormac McCarthy’s “Suttree” and instead I have to clean out my water filter, wait for it to dry (which I did not really do, I just dried it with a towel and told myself I would bleach in the bottle for a little while), put it back together and refill it. And for some reason, this filter takes FOREVER to filter the water. Which is weird because the candles are brand new. In Guinea, with new candles, my filter (same brand) would finish a whole top bucket in like 15 minutes. This one takes like an hour. Or more. I don’t even know because I never stick around to see how long it takes because it takes so frigging long. And I can’t brush my teeth and get all settled because I don’t have any clean water to do it with, it is currently being filtered at a snail’s pace.

DAMN YOU ANTS!!!

So next time I am in Bamako I am going to see if one of the ex-pat stores carries ant traps. Ants aren’t cute. So I don’t mind murdering them like I do mice.

Who don’t come into my house anymore thanks to my loud, mean but very cute cat. Who I still have not named. Right now his name is kitty.

Three Lunches

2009-11-20T09:11:00.000Z

So today I received three different lunches. My family’s toh and baobab leaf sauce (a portion big enough for two in their opinion, 4 in my opinion), Yusuf’s family’s toh and baobob sauce (a portion big enough for 1 in their opnion and 2 in mine), and Binta’s family’s beans (a huge bowl suitable for at least 4 people if that is all they were eating). I was like, holy shit. Luckily Yagari, my language trainer, agreed to eat with me so we got through most of Yusuf’s family’s toh. I gave some of my family’s toh to my cat and to the dog because if I didn’t make ANY of it disappear they would be offended. And then I ate like three bites of beans but I was STUFFED so I just gave the bowl to Hawa and it didn’t look like I’d made a dent in it at all so hopefully the family will eat some before sending it back over to Binta.

I mean, I do appreciate all the food gifts people send me but it is a truly delicate balance figuring out what to eat and how much so as not to offend people and I don’t want to just take some and throw it away (or give it to the dog) because, as you probably know, there are children starving in Africa!! However you wouldn’t know it here because whenever I try to get a child to help me eat some of these things they tell me they are full.

I wish I knew a hungry family that lived close by to me but the only really visibly hungry family I have seen so far is all the way across the village and I don’t know if I’d even be able to figure out which compound was theirs again, anyway. The kids looked like all the kids: skinny arms and legs, old man faces and big bloated bellies, but the way I knew they were hungry was that the mom and dad were SO skinny. I mean, nothing but muscle and bone. The mom’s ankles were like sticks. Also, the guy only had one wife which here means one of three things: you are very young, you are Christian, or you are poor. He was not very young, I very highly doubt he was Christian, and I’m pretty sure this is one of the families who do not even have a latrine so have to do their business out in the field. So my money is on category #3.

Anyway. I wish they lived closer because then I’d give them my leftovers.

It’s just more of a shame because I HAVE food. I have 3 US Postal Service Flat Rate boxes stuffed with food, plus a bunch of cans, packages and other things in my kitchen hutch, plus more than half a pallet of eggs. And a kilo of flour, 2 kilos of potatoes, and tomatoes and onions. And cucumbers! I mean, I HAVE FOOD. It’s like our celebrity culture in the States. When you can afford to buy a Dior dress, you get it for free. And people who can’t afford it go without. Kind of a messed up system. But as I am proving, it seems more universal than cultural.

Bambara Training

2009-11-19T09:11:00.000Z

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?

Laundry...and Cat As Delicacy

2009-11-14T09:10:00.000Z

Yesterday morning I took my bucket of clothes out to the well to do some washing. I mean, I don’t really have a problem washing my own clothes, but it takes me a long time and everybody laughs at me. Because I don’t do it right. Long story short, a maybe 13-year-old girl named Setu came out there with me and hauled up my water (still have not hauled water myself) and then we both started to wash stuff and after I had washed a couple of things, this woman who was at the well was just like, “stop. She will wash it for you.” Because I apparently can’t do it. So Setu washed all my stuff and then washed it all a SECOND time, which I found kind of confusing. Then she rinsed everything twice and helped me hang it up on my line. She did a LOT of work. I intended to pay her, but when I followed her to the piler (immediately after finishing helping me hang up the stuff, she walked straight over to the pestle and mortar and started pounding millet…girl knows the meaning of hard work without complaints), I held out 500 FCFA (like a dollar) and one of my precious few pink and white Guinean lollipops (though if my food trunk gets here I will have like 200 of them). Setu stared down at my hands and actually looked AFRAID. The woman at the piler objected (same woman from the well) and the grandma got up from her chair to discuss this, as well. Turns out the woman who said Setu would do my laundry was her mother, and your mother can command you and lend out your labor. She said, “I am Setu’s mother, and I told her to do your laundry for you. You must not pay her.” She took the lollipop from my hand and said I could give her that, but that was all. This was all in Bambara which I barely understand but that was the gist of it. So I gave her my precious lollipop but felt bad about her not being able to take the coin, but she seemed happy enough with the lollipop. When I saw her later that evening I gave her a Propel flavored powder packet and told her to put it in her water so she probably had a tasty drink AND recovered some electrolytes (go me!)

Drissa and I have started to do the “baseline survery”, which is a list of about 30 questions Peace Corps gave me and said to ask everyone in the village (if I can get around to every concession) to get an idea of the water and sanitation needs here. For one thing, they need a malaria sensibilization. I was informed that you can get malaria from eating eggs and drinking milk. I was like, NO, you can’t, you can only get it from mosquitoes. They had equally ridiculous ideas of where the palu comes from in Guinea (like from eating tomato seeds or fresh mangoes), but in Guinea, while they would say that, they would still eat tomatoes (seeds squeezed out) and mangoes (right off the tree). Here they have such a deficiency of protein (since they don’t do the dried fish thing) that it’s a crying shame they are afraid to eat two of their only reliable and relatively accessible protein sources.

Other things I’ve learned are that everyone goes to the hospital in the bigger town to have babies and get vaccinations (who then give out free mosquito nets which the people actually USE) and nearly nobody bleaches their water or washes their hands with soap. Some people don’t even rinse their hands after using the bathroom. This fact is made especially digusting by the fact that their left hand is their toilet paper. Also, they don’t get drinking water from the pumps. Because 200m is “far”. I’m like – in Guinea I had to go almost a kilo down a mountain just to get WORK water and drinking water was farther. 200m for potable water? Not far. Plus everybody has donkey carts, they wouldn’t even have to carry it. Hey maybe that is a good small business idea: one person who delivers bidons of water to people in a donkey cart for 100 Francs apiece or something. I should start asking this question to people (do you think the water from the pump is cleaner/better to drink? Would you pay 100F a bidon to have it delivered to your house?).

Today I was sitting out with some girls and they told me to go inside and get my “baby who doesn’t eat”. I had no idea what they were talking about but eventually decided the only thing they could mean is the large Big Bird stuffed animal with the tape deck in his butt that I inherited from Corinna. I brought it out and there was much wonder and laughter but since the batteries were dead, we couldn’t make it talk. If it didn’t have a tape deck in it, they would have been more confused (like, WTF is this for??? – but since it’s a cassette player, it makes complete sense, it’s just a funny looking cassette deck).

Also, tonight when Drissa and I got back from our afternoon’s interviews (we go from like 4-7), the kids outside my house were chopping up a charred CAT. Yes, like a house cat. People eat cat here. Which must account for the lack of available kittens to come eat my mice. At first I was grossed out, then I was kinda annoyed because they knew I NEEDED a cat but in their defense it was a big cat and I think they are looking for a kitten for me. I texted this to Corinna who happened to be with Raven and Ousmane (Raven’s Guinean boyfriend who has come up to Mali to be with her). Ousmane said he would NEVER eat a cat, as did Corinna, but Raven said she’d try it. I admit I was curious, but they did not offer me a piece so I dodged that moral dilemma.

I wonder if I’ll get to try pigeon…

One Mouse Down...

2009-11-12T09:10:00.000Z

So this evening before dinner I was out playing cards with Drissa and I started to hear a mouse inside and I was like, “there! You hear it! I’m not lying! There are mice!” And he heard it and we continued to play. Then we heard a splash and some more splashing. And I was like HOLY SHIT, the mouse fell into the water bucket. So I took the lantern inside and sure enough, there was a little mouse swimming around in the water bucket. I brought the bucket outside and I said, “Oh no! What do I do now?!” Because mice are cute. Obnoxious. But cute. And I could never kill one with my own hands. Though I’d have no problem sic-ing a cat on them. So there were some kids. And they gathered around the bucket and one of them dipped his hand in to fish out the mouse. As I was about say, “what will we do with him now?”, the kid took one step back, raised his hand over his head and slammed the mouse onto the ground as hard as he could. Liquid of some kind ricocheted into my face. I was stunned for a second. Then I ventured to look at the mouse, who had flown to my feet. I couldn’t have taken it if the mouse had still been alive – fatally injured, but alive. Thank God he wasn’t. He was as still as Melvin was after I found him drowned in a bucket in Guinea. A kid picked him up and did God-knows-what with him (I think threw him into the field). I said, “I prefer it when a cat kills the mice.” And wiped the drops from my face. Some kid said he’d go find me a cat. I think maybe they didn’t believe me about the mice before, but now they do. So now they are actually going to find me a cat.

Anyway. Today I also tried to explain to Drissa about “me time”. They have NO concept of “me time” in Africa. I mean, why WOULDN’T you spend every waking moment constantly surrounded by people? That’s normal! I had to explain because a. he thinks whenever I am alone in my house, I am sleeping (which is almost never the case) and b. he asked if I spend my nights out chatting with the family, which I don’t, ‘cause that is me time. Plus I go to sleep really early (like 8pm…hey man if I have to get up at 6 I gotta get my beauty sleep). So I had to explain to him that I am an American, and as an American, I need time by myself. I read, I write, I think, I just be alone, and that is something I need EVERY DAY. At first he was like WTF. But I just said, you’ve seen all the books in my house and all the paper, when I am alone in my house, I am reading those books and writing on that paper (really I am writing on this AlphaSmart but I am SO not about to try to explain this thing). I think in the end he understood. Probably not WHY I need it, but what I am doing during it, and that it’s one of those weird things white people do.

He brought me a bag full of beef today. I was like, “oh”. That shouldn’t be surprising at all but right when I saw it in my head I went, “gross” and ALMOST said, “eeww” out loud but then checked myself. As a bag of raw, bloody (and I mean bloody…it dripped on my floor) meat is quite a gift in Africa. I gave it to Setu, who was on cooking duty today. She and the momuso (grandma) who were there seemed really happy about it. It showed up in that evening’s peanut sauce (three cheers for peanut sauce!!). Also Yousufu sent over a big bowl of the grits-like thing and peanut sauce (I prefer my family’s peanut sauce though). And Drissa was like, “you have to eat it.” And this is after we are already full of my family’s dinner. And I’m like, “dude, this is how big my stomach is” and make a circle with my hands. “How am I gonna fit that into it, too?” He said if you don’t eat some of what people send to you, they will think you don’t like them. Even if you get six bowls of food, you have to eat some of each or you will offend people. I was like, “I sure as shit am never going to go hungry here.” I have to give all my potatoes to my family tomorrow, before they go bad. I don’t anticipate making French fries anytime soon.

Also,today I introduced cards into my relationship with Drissa. First I asked him if he played cards and he said yes but then his eyes got big when he saw the deck and he was like, “that’s a lot of cards!!” So clearly he had never played with a regular deck of cards before. I taught him to play “Go Fish”. To make it educational for me, we did it in Bambara. Dude, you can learn your numbers QUICK playing Go Fish in another language. “Segin b’I kun wa?” – Do you have an eight? You can also learn how to say, “do you have…?” which will be helpful especially when trying to buy things. We named the king “ce” (CHE) which means man or husband and the queen “muso” which means woman or wife and the jack “den” which means kid. I contemplated naming the ace “Allah” but stopped short at that. We played like 30 rounds before dinner got to us.

He also told me that it is weird that I eat alone and not in the same bowl with the family. I told him they bring me my own bowl 3x a day and do not invite me to eat with them, so that’s how we do it. He is probably going to tell them to start inviting me to eat with them and then I will lose even MORE “me time”.

I think I had a spoiling surplus of “me time” in Guinea (like, 90% of my day) and here switching it 180 so I only have 10% “me time” is almost more shocking than it would have been coming from the States.

At any rate. Maybe they won’t think I am just sleeping all afternoon.

I Want Tabaski Clothes, Too!

2009-11-11T09:09:00.000Z

So tonight I was out staring at the stars. It’s amazing how many you can see when there are no lights around for miles. It’s beautiful, and humbling, and existential.

Some women walked by and invited me to go chat in another compound (after them saying it slowly several times I understood it). I told them thank you but I am going to stay here. Then I decided to venture over to the circle of people around a little light over by my host father’s corner of the compound. I went over and lots of people offered me their chairs but I ended up just sitting on this REALLY low bench-like contraption. It was all women and some children. There was a metal plate in the middle and some coins on it. I asked what the money was for and discerned that it was for clothes for Tabaski. Which might be next week. I don’t really know. So I was like, “Well *I* want clothes for Tabaski! How much is it?” So we spent a long time trying to discern how much money it was (because in Bambara, like lots of west African languages, you have to multiply the figure they give you by five in order to figure out how many Francs it actually costs and since I have a hard enough time figuring out what it was the first figure they gave me, it was a bit of work). So they finally just put the amount of money I would need to give onto the plate: 3 mille 750 francs, which is what I had finally worked it out to be in my head and I went back to my house to retrieve the funds. So, inshallah, I will be getting a Tabaski outfit. Which is great because I don’t have very many clothes (and NO African clothes – all should be on their way from Guinea – inshallah). Plus I’d hate to be wearing a western outfit during the biggest holiday of the year. Which, this year, happens to be a day or two after Thanksgiving (if I knew when Thanksgiving actually was I could pinpoint when Tabaski is but without my calendar I can’t remember if it is supposed to be the third Thursday in November or what. If that’s the case, then Thanksgiving is a week from Thursday and Tabaski is…Saturday maybe. Life is hard without a calendar.

In Guinea, for 3,750 francs, which is like 37,500 Guinean Francs, you could get a HELLA nice complet. So I am excited to see what I will get. If somebody doesn’t take my measurements soon, I might not end up with one. But we shall see.

The other highlight of this conversation was that Abi, who I believe to be the first wife (turns out she is the second wife) of my host dad, Moussa, who has three wives (exactly which three women who live here I still have to discern) said they are going to help me find a cat “sisan”, which means “right away” or “early”. I thanked her and pantomimed my problems with the mice by pretending to sleep, then knocking on the bench with my fingertips to mimic their noise during the night, then plugging my ears and letting out an “auuuuugggghhhhh”, which elicted peals of laughter. Not sure exactly how they figured out I needed a cat, probably Khalifa told them (he’s my language tutor). But maybe I will get one soon! That would be sweet. Although I have not noticed the mice getting into my foodstuffs yet, my experience has shown they WILL. And they are robbing me of good sleep.

Plus I read in my Water and Sanitation manual that fleas they carry and their poo can spread disease. So KILL ‘EM, I say!! Or at least run them out of my house.

When I came back inside, the cockroach problem I thought had subsided has NOT and I spent the next 10-15 minutes killing every cockroach I could get my flip flop on (maybe 15 or so). Some got away. I feel like even if I did spray this place, it wouldn’t get them because a. they are cockroaches and can survive a nuclear holocaust and b. there’s plastic covering the ceiling (except around the edges) so it wouldn’t really get to them in there, which is where they dwell.

As I write there is something crawling around on the plastic, evidently confused. I am assuming it is a mouse. Even after prodding the plastic with my broom handle several times, it is still wandering around aimlessly.

Basically, I am religious about my mosquito net for MANY more reasons than just malaria. Seriously.

My Neighbor's the Witch Doctor!

2009-11-11T09:08:00.000Z

Ok so I don’t know that he is actually a witch doctor, but he is a dispenser of some sort.

I was washing some dishes and (who I assume is) his daughter comes by to invite me over for tea (that sounds really British, doesn’t it?). I can understand this in Bambara: I be gaa taa dute min (you come and drink tea). I can also understand “you come and eat” – I be gaa taa dumunike. They do tea differently here. It’s not nearly as strong nor does it take NEARLY as long to make. In fact, I don’t even think they use the gunpowder tea like they do in Guinea. I think they use teabags! Weird!

Anyway so I follow her over to the neighboring compound and she leads me to one of the rooms where Yusufu is with some lady (who seems kind of well-to-do: she had a giant red leathery purse – high class). Plus she spoke French, which means she went to school and definitely past the required 6th grade (even the 6th graders can’t speak any French, though). He is sitting on the floor and she is sitting on a bench. At first glance the room looks like a junk room. There are bottles of who-knows-what all over the place (there was even an empty bottle of Jack Daniels Whiskey in there – where did he get that??), little packets of something wrapped in paper, all kinds of bundles of leaves and herbs and then the weird stuff. Like animal horns and skins, dried snake skins and some weird, small, dried, skinned animal hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And bones. I don’t know what he is saying to the lady but she is paying him (maybe, like, 500 francs or about a dollar) and he is loading her up with paper packets, bundles of leaves, powders, etc… I notice a little paper packet hanging above the door from a string. It kind of reminded me of a mezuzah (the thing Jews put on every door that has some scripture inside it).

I recall that Drissa once told me he doesn’t go to pray (but I could swear he said he was Muslim), but he does something with Yusufu. Maybe he’s an animist. I don’t know.

Yusufu seems kind of young to be the village witch doctor though. He is maybe in his early 30s. But he has a very well-organized compound, lots of animals AND he has a moto (which means he has some money). I don’t know how many wives or kids he has, I’ll have to ask him sometime.

But anyway. Maybe he can make me some funky African charm to keep away the sorcerers. That would be awesome.

A Word on Toh - and other Malian culinary excursions

2009-11-10T09:08:00.000Z

So I think I once described toh as a giant gnocchi, lacking any other sufficient comparison. But gnocchi is more firm and not grainy enough and in my toh-some adventures here in Mali so far I have come up with a MUCH better comparison: it’s like cream of wheat with far too little water so it’s all congealed together rather than soupy. That is exactly what toh is like.

Personally, I like toh. I have had two kinds of toh: manioc toh and millet toh. Manioc toh is yellowish white and millet toh is purplish. Manioc is what we had in Guinea (as everyone there grew manioc all the time and I don’t think I ever saw one millet plant). In my village in Mali, it’s ALL about the millet. I can’t say I prefer one strain to the other (though can’t wait to look up whether millet has a higher nutritional value than the nearly completely void manioc). But I do prefer peanut sauce with my toh. Mainly because I prefer peanut sauce nearly all the time (since there’s no more manioc leaf sauce for me). The sauce they usually give with the toh, however, is baobob leaf sauce, which as I have before stated, many volunteers refer to as “snot sauce”. This is a fair comparison. It is slimy and long slimy strings stretch from your spoon (or hand) to the bowl once you’ve dipped your toh. Plus it’s green. And fairly salty. So “snot” might actually end up being a fair comparison.

At any rate, I think we eat toh for one meal every two days or so. They also have come up with a surprising number of other iterations of millet. There is the keke-like thing, which is like millet sawdust but I don’t like it as much as the manioc keke. Then there is a coarse grits-like thing, but like the toh, it is like a congealed mass of grits rather than soupy. Then there is a cous-cous which I think I have only had once. And, of course, the porridge for breakfast (I stand by my statement it would be greatly improved with a little powdered milk, cinnamon and sugar, which I am going to try out next time I can get my hands on those three things). For sauces there’s the baobob leaf sauce, peanut sauce, a bean sauce and tomato sauce. I wasn’t super fond of the tomato sauce. Once I got the grits-like thing covered in a very thin oil sauce (kinda like a vinaigrette). It was tasty but I am betting nutritionally void. They do not appear to make any other leaf sauces, which is a disappointment (leaves have vitamins!). Also, they don’t really do the piment thing. Which I thought was weird (have to bring my own piment). Also, they don’t put mashed up dried fish in everything, which I often despised in Guinea but now realize was WAY better for your health since you’re at least getting some protein that way (here I can go all three meals without a speck of protein – the kids’ distended bellies are huge). At least they make bean sauces. And there’s lots of peanut eating going on (this might be partly because they just harvested all their peanuts – not sure how long the peanuts end up lasting throughout the year).

And the other thing is: they have SO MANY animals. In my compound alone, there are about 6 cows, 15 goats, 20 sheep, 20 pigeons (which as I mentioned, are food here), and maybe 30 chickens. I don’t think we personally have any ducks. So basically what I’m saying is, there’s no lack of eggs or milk or even meat, but I have never (in my whole week here…) seen it getting eaten (although there was sour milk in the porridge yesterday so that’s something!). So I’ve decided that whenever I leave to go to Bamako or wherever, when I come back I will always bring some form of protein (like a rooster or some fresh fish) and some form of vitamins (like a watermelon). Plus I am going to ask Haoua (my APCD) ASAP where I can get my hands on some moringa seeds. And then work on perfecting a moringa leaf-peanut butter sauce.

EDIT: tonight was tomato sauce again with the grits-clump. Not like I remember it the first night, that’s for sure. I think the first night I was still coming off my high of pizza and carbonara sauce I’d been enjoying for three weeks and the thrust back into African cuisine was a bit of a bump. But now? It’s just like any other sauce. And it’s got some vitamins in it!

Life in the Diarra Compound

2009-11-09T09:07:00.000Z

So the day starts off like this. The women are up by, like, 5:30am…at the latest. I’m not sure exactly what they do that early other than heat my bath water, but it probably consists of heating other people’s bath water and starting to pound the millet. At 6:15am sharp, every day (except, weirdly, Friday when it didn’t happen until like 6:45), I hear the handle of a bucket bounce down onto the rim and then three taps on my metal door. My bath water has arrived. I groan a response so they know I am getting up and loudly put on my flip flops, sitting by the side of my bed, find my (really dirty – need to wash it) pagne and wrap it around myself so I don’t answer the door bare-kneed even though it is always a woman bringing me hot water. She’ll pour a little bit in my bath bucket and then I swirl it around and cleanse it with my hand to clean it out, expertly (ha!) throw the discarded water out into the dust and hold it down as she pours the rest of the heated water inside. Then I usually stumble to my latrine (which now stinks of rotten meat thanks to the spoiled Spam Lite I threw down it on, like, Day 3). I deposit the bucket and my basket of bath things and usually stumble back to lay down for another 15 minutes before dragging myself out of bed, grabbing my (stinky, need to wash it) REI towel and trudging back to the latrine to bathe (sort of unnecessarily since I bathed before going to bed). I wouldn’t do it if the water wasn’t warm.

After that sometimes I am motivated and I get dressed and go out into the compound to study my Bambara right away, where I am served “seri”, which is a millet porridge similar to oatmeal that could greatly benefit from some powdered milk, sugar and cinnamon. Other times I am still tired so I lay down again, other times I am anti-social so I read a little, and in both of these cases the seri is brought to my door within 30 minutes. Oh, clearly during the 5:30-6:15 period they also start making the seri…seri-ously (ha ha).

After this I always go sit out in the compound with my Bambara stuff, even if I don’t feel like studying at all. I’ll sit there and make faces at kids and do my flash cards and page through the Bambara learning manual Peace Corps gave me but a lot of the time I just start pulling peanuts off the dried plant with the grandmas (and the kids who I think help only so they can come sit with me – you’re welcome, grandmas!) and listen to them talk. And saluer the women who come by to go to the well to get water and the men who cruise through the compound for no reason other than to saluer.

Speaking of men, the men tend to be gone early in the day. Like, after the seri. Twice a week (Monday and Friday), my host dad Moussa puts stuff on the back of his bike and goes to the markets (11k and 7k away, respectively). Still have to figure out what’s in that bag. One time he came back with sweet potatoes, which were well-received. So far I think there are two other grown men in our compound. One says “bonjour” to me every day and the other one speaks some French but they are usually gone during the day, in the fields or maybe just hanging out at someone else’s house.

It’s the kids that take care of the animals. Or, herd them, I should say. This morning while I was pulling peanuts with the grandmas all the kids ran over to the “sheep corner” and after some excitement came out holding a stiff, dead baby sheep by the tail. They passed the carcass among themselves until finally a little boy walked away out of sight (not very far, though) to dispose of the body. I thought, “that’s where I should have put that damn Spam”. Anyway, when I say they herd the animals, I mean they are the ones to untie or ungate them, chase them with sticks, chase them when they come back into the compound (loose) and tie/gate them back up in the evening (one of the most amusing things is to see a tiny 4 year old boy with a stick bossing around a full-grown male cow about 50x his size). We have cows, sheep, goats and donkeys that require this attention (actually I don’t know where the donkeys spend the night – when they are not working they always seem to be hanging out in the fields). We also have chickens, ducks and pigeons which from what I can tell pen themselves up just fine when it starts to get dark (but in the ducks’ case spend all day hanging out at the well, pooping on the concrete platform, just to contaminate the water, I’m sure). Also, apparently we eat pigeons, I found out today. I remember hearing them referred to as “rats with wings” (probably from a New Yorker) in the States, but here they are food.

I try to hang out until lunch (which today was the millet keke-like thing with bean sauce). Waiting for lunch today, I separated kolo nuts from their shells with ba Abi, which they use to make oil. She also made a hot bissap tea out of hibiscus flowers and sugar which was, in a word, TASTY. After all this, I usually repose and read and study Bambara and sometimes sleep and rarely emerge until my bath water is again delivered to me, followed by my dinner (today a millet grits-like thing with the “snot sauce” [baobab] usually reserved for toh). Then I bring back the remainder of my dinner (I usually leave at least half, not only because I stop as soon as the hunger pangs go away but also because I am afraid that my leftovers are supplementing the kids’ diet [not to mention my friend, the dog’s]). Then I usually write or read or listen to music and can still hear the kids running around, squealing, and sometimes the TV. Have I mentioned this? They have a TV which is run off a car battery, which I think they charge from the neighbors’ solar panel device. I only saw them watching it once (though I know it happens several times a week), but everyone gathers around the TV, which has a grainy green picture of what looks like a soap opera playing and I am certain is only in French (which nearly none of them speak or understand). I have opted out of joining in on this. Once I get my DVDs back from Guinea I should figure out how to hook my laptop up to it and play Pirates of the Caribbean for them in French. Although my laptop screen itself might actually be bigger.

Anyway when all’s said and done I’m usually asleep by 9 or 10pm. Only to be tormented all night long by my (huge) mice. I really need to find a cat ASAP.

Adjustment

2009-11-07T09:05:00.001Z

Mike put it best (with help from Nick, I think): it’s like your husband/wife just died and you’re being asked to sleep with somebody else…and they’re not even that hot!!

I haven’t properly mourned for Guinea. I don’t know that I can. And being shoved into this new relationship is in some ways even more trying than it was the first time. In other ways its not.

There are 11 of us who decided to transfer to Mali: me, Corinna, Mike, Marisa, Danielle, Paul, Erich, Mark, Scotty, Yik and Molly. Mark, Scotty, Yik and Molly are G18 and I didn’t even meet them until I arrived at Tubaniso after the evac (to be fair Yik was in my car between Kankan and Bamako, but he was wearing a crazy pink hair net and I couldn’t take him seriously).

Erich is a volunteer for a very finite amount of time from now (January, I believe) as he is G15 and deserves his COS. The other 6 of us are all from my stage, G17 (I am the sole AgFo to transfer here though I am proud to say ALL G17 AgFos did transfer – to places like Benin, Jamaica, Madagascar, Zambia and Senegal). G17 is hardcore. Out of the 4 stages in-country, I believe we were the one with the most transfers – we weren’t ready to give up, man. G15 understandably just COSed (their COS date was like Feb. 4). A lot of G16 (education) went home for 2 months and is going to start Liberia’s program in February (they get to keep their COS date which is a SWEET deal) – the others COSed. A surprisingly small number of G18ers opted to transfer (in their defense, they swore in like a week before we were evacuated). This includes the 4 who decided to stick it out with us in Mali. I believe most of the others are looking at re-enrollment, which basically means they go home, get placed again and start completely over.

So the last couple of days I have thought more and more about going back to get my dog. I know Mike and Marisa are thinking of going back for their dog and cat, too. I wouldn’t go get Yogi if I didn’t know for sure I could bring him back to the States, so I have to look that up. For the sole reason that I suspect he is probably happy in Santou and it is a vastly different world here and I don’t think I would want to leave him here.

Corinna warned me about how hard it would be to go back to Guinea but I want to and I think it would bring me some kind of closure so I would welcome it. If my mom or dad actually come through on their pledge to come visit me I would want to take them to Guinea, too. I spent nearly a year of my short (25 year) life there, and it is a place that will remain in my heart and memory until the day I die.

Missing Guinea

2009-11-04T09:04:00.000Z

I feel priveledged to have been able to live in Guinea, one of the most beautiful places in the world. While I did not and don’t feel like I would have gotten a lot of actual projects done there, it was an amazing place with amazing people and I will miss it forever. Especially my effing dog.

But now I feel priveledged to serve in Mali. The people here are great and here I feel like I will actually get projects accomplished. So I got to have the best of both worlds.

Today Drissa and I went to the bigger town north of us where the gendarmerie, mayor and sous prefet are. I’m not exactly sure who I met but everyone seemed to be happy that I am here and unlike in Guinea do not make big non-sequitor speeches about it. I think I met the mayor, the second mayor and the sous prefet. I don’t know really. The Sous Prefet was very flirty and it’s still hard to get rid of that.

I was wrong in thinking it wouldn’t be easier this time around. It is, if only in the sense that I know I have to act like a freaking idiot and be unapologetic for my lack of language skills but show that I am trying.

I think my experience here will be a lot different than my experience in Guinea. Both will have their high and low points and both will be equally important and satisfying in my life.

But I seriously miss my dog and want to go get him if Guinea reopens anytime soon.

My family has been giving me hot bath water twice a day. Once in the evening when it gets dark and once at 6:15 in the morning. Which means I have to get up every day at 6:15am. So I take an afternoon nap every day after lunch.

I managed to get the house pretty much organized today (as much as I can without a table or shelves yet). I’ve been getting fed 3x a day every day so I don’t know when I will have occasion to bust open the four food boxes I have with me (inheritances from people who flew to their reassignment/back to America and two boxes from my grandparents) or the entire carton of eggs I bought. I have to figure out how to pay the family back for all the food. Whether I should just pay them or buy them stuff on market day remains to be seen.

Dooni, dooni as they say: little by little.

First Impressions of Mali

2009-11-03T09:03:00.000Z

Well, I was installed at my site today. A few days ago we (as in those of us transferring to Mali) went to a village near the training center to practice our frankly non-existent Bambara. In that moment I had never missed Guinea more. It hit me that I was going to have to do it all over again. The awkward silence, not understanding anything people say to you, embarrassing yourself, offending people, setting your boundaries and limits, getting used to new food, feeling like an asshole – I HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. And in that moment, sitting there surrounded by women and children with Corinna and Mark I was just like…I don’t want to go through this again. I was deluding myself into thinking it would be easier this time around. Yeah, it would be easier if I were going to a Pular-speaking village (never realized how much Pular I really knew until I couldn’t use it anymore). Or a village closer to Guinea’s borders who ate the same kinds of foods. But this village is TOTALLY different.

Let me preface by saying that I am happy to be here. And it is a little bit easier because I KNOW I have to make an ass out of myself and embrace that fact. I made a kid fall on the ground and cry today because I chased him with my broom. I was just kidding but he ended up really scared after he fell. In the States the mom would be like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY KID???” But here, they laugh. Getting hurt is funny (it was like this in Guinea, too).

So the things about my new village that I like more than Santou:

1. My house is small, just two rooms. It is a real “mud bush house” as my APCD called it. And it is. It is made out of mud. The thatch roof is held up by good-sized tree trunks. There is black plastic hanging under the roof to prevent rain leaks and catch falling debris. It is, in a word, awesome.

2. I live with people. I live in a concession (sort of…it’s not really surrounded by a wall but it’s clear all these houses are “together”) with I don’t know how many other families. Maybe they are all part of the same extended family. I haven’t figured it out yet. But the point is, they are falling all over themselves to do stuff for me. They bring me water (the well is only like 30 yards away, I could do it…however the pump is kinda far and they brought me two big bidons of pump water so that’s a plus). They bring me food because I said I was too busy and tired to come out and eat ensemble tonight. THEY HEATED MY BATH WATER!! Which seems ridiculous. In fact I think I told them not to do it. I mean, it’s not cold. But I remember Jake saying his family in training heated his water because even though it was hot as hell in Forecariah, if you bathe in warm water, you feel cooler afterwards. It was a quality investment. I don’t want to put them out, though, so I hope they don’t do it every day. (UPDATE: they do it twice a day, every day. I am grateful because it is cold when I bathe at sunrise and after sunset.)

3. I am the first volunteer ever to live here. They have wanted a volunteer for a really long time and now that they have one they are really excited.

4. I sort of have reseau. If I put my phone on the little ledge above my window outside it gets a signal so can receive calls and text messages. If I want to talk on it I have to stand with my back against the wall on my tiptoes with my ear bent as far up as possible. If I stand flat-footed I lose the signal. I am considering finding some sort of box I can stand on.

5. My homologue is 18 and actually wants to be my homologue. He comes over every morning and hangs out pretty much all day. We eat together and he helps me with my Bambara. He also helps me get stuff like kerosene and putting together my stove.

6. Donkeys. ‘Nuff said.

7. Pretty much nobody speaks French. This means I HAVE to learn Bambara and be able to communicate in their language which means I can do a lot more communication with women, whose French skills also lacked in Guinea.

Things not as awesome as Guinea:

1. My dog isn’t here. Self-explanatory.

2. I have a cockroach problem. Only at night, but there are lots and they are big. Have to bomb my house.

3. Petites. There are SO MANY KIDS. I mean there were a lot of kids in Guinea but the kids here outnumber the adults at least 3-to-1. And because they’ve never had a white person here before they are VERY curious. Also noisy.

4. Nobody speaks French. I know I had this in my likes, too, but right now it’s also in my dislikes because it pretty much means I can’t communicate AT ALL. Keep in mind that Peace Corps Mali usually trains their volunteers in the local language of their village for the two-month PST period. I’ve taken Bambara for about 6 days.

5. I live with people. Also in the likes, but it means I don’t really have a lot of privacy and always have to be worried about being social and always have people walking up to my door and windows to say hello. Or other things I can’t understand.

6. Food. All they eat is millet. Every single meal. In the morning it’s like a millet porridge (would be improved with some sugar and cinnamon). The dinner I had the first night I really didn’t like. It was like un-molested millet with a tomato sauce. I really didn’t like it. But the other meals I’ve had have been good. I even like the “blob with snot sauce” as some volunteers refer to toh and baobab leaf sauce. In fact I had that for lunch. It was good. They make cous-cous out of millet, a keke-like thing, toh, and others. There are like 10 different bases they can make out of millet. It’s creative. Plus the peanut sauce is pretty good. But there’s no manioc leaf sauce. And I have yet to have a fresh leaf sauce (baobab leaf sauce is made from dried leaves). So we shall see.

All-in-all, there are lots of pluses and minuses but as usual, I’ll make the best of it.

Moving to Mali

2009-10-27T23:01:00.002Z

Well I have been officially accepted as a transfer to the Mali Water & Sanitation program. I am still in denial that I am not going back to Guinea and probably will be until I am installed at my site next week and have a good, long, snotty, ugly cry in my house.

Without my dog.

This whole process has been stressful and awful but somehow we are all making it through in one way or another.

PacMan helps (thanks Dave).

So here's to making the most of Mali!!

Officially Suspended

2009-10-20T10:05:00.002Z

So. It's over for us in Guinea. We are not going back. I don't really know what to say about it right now other than that we are all now looking at our other options. On va voir.

"Consolidation" Sucks

2009-10-17T15:44:00.002Z

It's not so much that I mind being here in PC Mali's training compound with all my colleagues but it SUCKS to not be in Guinea anymore. It's like the old saying: "you don't know what you've got til it's gone." I miss my dog SO MUCH. I left him with Ousmane II and Kareem. My fellow volunteers joke that the people of my village are at this moment enjoying Yogi "brochettes" (basically, meat shish kebobs). Too soon.

We range between laughing and crying pretty frequently and personally I am in a bit of denial that we won't be going back to Guinea because I REALLY want to go back.

But I don't think we are going back. And it SUCKS. It sucks worse than anything else: worse than leaving home for college, worse than transferring schools to different states, worse than summer camp coming to an end. Because the people we left behind became not only our friends but our FAMILY. And we did not get to say proper goodbyes or cry about it (because Guineans don't cry in public). And also because those people we love are now in danger. In an unstable African country in complete confusion. And the more we hear about violence and instability, the more pictures and videos we see, the harder it is to justify to ourselves just leaving them there as if "it isn't our fight."

And it SUCKS abandoning your dog. Who you got when he was the size of your palm. Who can't understand why you left him or what happened. Who stood by you during all the toughest times of your service in an unfamiliar country.

Anyway. The idea now is that if the Guinea program has to be suspended (we should know this early next week), the majority of us (who aren't close to COS) will try to transfer countries. The good news is that there are several countries saying they can take 10-15 of us apiece, so we will all probably be able to find a spot. The bad news is none of those spots will be Guinea. And that's the next part to come to peace with.

"Consolidation"

2009-10-04T15:42:00.000Z

Well as I was brushing my teeth tonight I saw a bright flashlight coming hurriedly to my house. At first I thought it was just one of my friends, or acquiaintances because most of my friends know I don’t take visitors after dark, especially if my door is closed. But the flashlight was too bright. And moving too quickly for a Guinean. It was Ian.

I was like what’s up? It’s not uncommon for him to stop by my house if his car has stopped in my town and it didn’t occur to me at first that this couldn’t be a regular visit because he had just gone to John’s site yesterday (in fact my friend Ousmane II said he saw him coming through on a taxi at like 3am). Ian just hung his arms on my window with his face up to the screen and said, “I have some bad news.” And I was like what? And he was like, “You know what I’m going to say.” And I still didn’t. My brain was not working. Then I had a fleeting thought that we might be consolidating to John’s site and the words came out of his mouth: “We’re going to Mali.” He couldn’t stay, as the car had just briefly stopped for him to tell me this so I don’t have any info other than that he is coming with a car in the morning and we are going to go to John’s site and wait for Peace Corps to come pick us up.

I was alright when Ian left but then I got dressed and went to Ousmane II’s house and just started crying when I was telling him we are leaving tomorrow.

I couldn’t speak, really, so he told his mom and she started crying and then we went to the Carrefour and said goodbye to Safi with the keke and Nene Aissatu who I get evening rice from and then went to Caw Ousmane/Aissatu Bah’s house and I couldn’t speak there either so Ousmane II had to tell them. On the way there we saw Alessane and told him.

I’m sad that I won’t get to see Ousmane I before I go. I don’t have a picture of him. This makes me incredibly sad.

I haven’t allowed myself to think about leaving Yogi yet. Ousmane II and Kareem said they will take care of him. Hopefully he will be happy there.

I have a lot of packing to do even though I already did a preliminary pack last week when things started going downhill. Have to get all my food together to give away tomorrow. Everything perishable.

I’m going to cry myself to sleep, I just know it.

Information

2009-10-01T15:39:00.000Z

So this morning a dude I didn’t know wearing trendy blue camoflauge pants came up to my house with a note from John. He had duct-taped all the edges so no one could peek at it (not that anyone here reads English, anyway) so I knew it had to be about our status.

I wasn’t really freaking out or anything but I was surprised at what a relief it was to get official news rather than guessing and assuming.

Apparently right now (well, as of yesterday when he wrote the note) our status is “Alert”, which is a step below “Standfast”. Apparently at some earlier time, we were on Standfast and John had sent notes but I did not receive it (don’t know about Ian, but if he sent me Ian’s, like he did this time, Ian didn’t get it either). So I’m sending Ian’s copy up to his site with his friend Conte today (hooray for market day!) so hopefully he will get it tonight.

So apparently Paul canceled his race, which is kind of a relief because I didn’t want him to think I was letting him down! It also means John is definitely at his site and can pass us news (when the bush note system works).

I decided not to go to John’s site today, but rather on Sunday which is market day and I could get a taxi there and back in the same day and not have to stay over (guarding the patience of my dog sitters carefully). Plus there might be some straggler avocadoes on the big market day so I’m looking forward to that.

So my friend Alysun just came over and was talking to me about the greve and he is quite riled up, indeed. He told me that yesterday Dadis said it wasn’t him who fired upon the people at the stadium but rather that the military has split into two factions (meaning this other faction is not under his control). Oh, that’s WAY better (can you taste the sarcasm?). Alysun actually did not seem to believe it and went off about something Dadis said about France (I think) and said, “once words come out of your mouth, it’s like a bucket of water. Once it spills on the ground you cannot put it back.”

I think I forgot to mention that while there are over 150 dead, there are something like 2500 people injured. Either beaten, raped or shot.

“Why am I Guinean?” Alysun laments. “The government doesn’t know what they’re doing. We will never be developed. If you know that the money you give for development is going to be boofed, you won’t give it, right?” I explained how President Obama said one of the most important factors in the ability of a country to develop is good governance. Guinea does not and has not had that since the French left over 50 years ago (or even before that – I have no idea how good a governor France was).

Oh would you look at that, just received John’s first note.

Alysun talks about education and how there are people who are 30 years old and can’t write their names. “How will your country become developed if there is no education?”

To me the answer is grassroots. Getting everyone together from the ground up to demand a real democracy. Unfortunately in a country like this, the only way to get a real democracy might be to take it by force.

Greve

2009-09-29T15:36:00.001Z

So this morning I went to the health center with Aissatu Bah. She had cut her finger with a knife while cooking the other day and was going to have her dressings changed. Basically, something we as Americans do at home but here there’s no such thing as a basic household first aid kit so the simplest thing like putting some iodine on it and a band-aid (they don’t actually have band-aids here, they tape gauze onto the wound) requires a trip to the health center. They don’t have much there, but they do have iodine and gauze. However they don’t sterilize anything before using it nor do they wash their hands before dressing somebody’s wound and I’m just like – “you’d be better off if I did that for you at my house” but we are not allowed to do that, so…

While we were there she and the doctor told me that a greve started in Conakry yesterday. I think greve literally means “strike”, but it’s more like “people are demonstrating against the government and the government is killing them.” 87 dead since yesterday. The only thing I could get out of anyone is that it has to do with “the opposition”. Really have to try to get BBC News on my radio today. I am sure we are on standfast (first stage of readiness – it means stay at your site or wherever you currently happen to be) right now but I haven’t heard anything and if I still haven’t heard anything by Thursday morning I don’t know if I should go to Paul’s race or not. It’s nowhere near Conakry, it’s in the opposite direction, but if we’re on standfast we are not supposed to travel. I really wish I could make phone calls without going all the way to John’s site. But maybe he will send me a note today or tomorrow to let me know what’s going on. At any rate I am putting my “consolidation” pack in order in case we get the word to start preparing for possible evacuation. Plus a little suitcase of the stuff I’ll want sent to me if we do get evacuated (apparently they will send you a limited weight of stuff if you are evacuated). Mine is mostly fabric/African clothes, jewelry and other small souvenirs. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

So besides that, Aissatu’s family does not have good luck this week. Not only did Aissatu cut her finger cooking, but Caw Ousmane cut his thumb with his machete out in the fields. Grandma has been vomiting for 2 days. Billo has a HORRIBLE ear infection, I mean there is just crusty discolored gunk all over the outside of his ear. I asked if they had taken him to the health center and they said no. Kid definitely needs antibiotics. Then the other kid (shoot…Ibrahima?) has all these sores all over his shins oozing pus and blood and I was like Aissatu, use the soap I gave you the other day (good antibacterial one), wash that well 3-4 times a day and make the kid wear clean pants. SERIOUSLY. I don’t know if they will do it or not. But basically there are only 3 people in the family who are in good health: Caw Ousmane’s wife Aissatu, his baby Tidiane and Binta (teenager and Aissatu Bah’s sister).

Also my mice are not dead. I just saw one sprint across the living room floor. Yesterday I saw one walking all slow so I thought maybe he was in his death throes but then he saw me and shot off like a rocket. Can’t kill bugs with fumigation, can’t kill mice with rat poison (and they DID eat it), what’s with these African super-creatures? Maybe that’s why they call them “Africanized Bees” cause if they’re impossible to kill, they’re probably Afrca-like.

In other news, I got a really awesome loaf of French bread today. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, just the way I like it!! Wish I knew which baker baked it. YUM.

EDIT: Ok so my friend Bella just gave me the down-low on the greve, which, I looked it up, does mean strike. So apparently what’s going on is that all of the “opposition” candidates (everyone but Dadis – there are like 80) had planned during Ramadan that they wanted to have a demonstration protesting Dadis’ plans to be a candidate on the ballot, which he originally said he would not do. They knew they had to wait until Ramadan was over so they planned it for Sept. 28 which is Guinea’s independence day (when they kicked France out) in the Estade du the 28 de Septembre (Independence Stadium, basically). About a week ago Dadis made his candidacy official. Which fueled the demonstration even more. There were over 50,000 “jeunesse” (youth, though I suspect they weren’t all youths) there. The CNDD did not like this demonstration and told them to disperse. They said no. So the Presidential Guard (Red Berets) went in and made them leave, in the process killing 87 people (and evidently raping women with their guns – this is just what my friend told me). So in response, there is apparently a demonstration in Mamou today (“the intersection of Guinea” – gotta go through there to go almost anywhere) and he thinks they will spread to all the bigger cities, places where we have volunteers (well, I mean, we even have volunteers in Conakry but at least in Conakry they can go to the Bureau which is guarded).

So if this is true and there are going to be demonstrations like this in bigger cities, I am not going to Paul’s race, as I have to go through several big cities to get there. I just hope that John hasn’t left his site yet and that we are on standfast and he has to stay there because if me and Ian don’t have John there to send us messages, we are kind of SOL. Although I guess if it were a real emergency he could call the German couple who live in his city and they could send us a message (they speak English – and French, and German, and probably 2 or 3 other languages =).)

At any rate, I’m getting my “For America” suitcase all ready to go…just in case.

Death Toll: 157

2009-09-27T15:39:00.000Z

So when my friend Bella came over today with his friend I asked them for the news. Then I made them help me tear apart my living room looking for a dead mouse.

News first. So apparently they had not had a lot of opportunity to listen to the radio since yesterday but one thing they DID know was that the military is still firing in Conakry and the death toll is now 157. So on Day Two they killed almost as many people as on Day One. At least they’re consistent? They didn’t know anything about what happened with the demonstration in Mamou or if strife was spreading, but just based on the fact that the death toll is rising and there is still shooting in Conakry, I decided not to go to Paul’s race. Sorry Paul. You live in a big city and I have to go through two big cities and one medium city to get to you and I just…don’t want to push it. Plus for all I know we are on Standfast and nobody will be able to go to Paul’s race.

However I might go to John’s site tomorrow to use the phone and buy some eggs. I would like to talk to our Safety and Security officer so I can send a note to Ian and let him know the situation. It’s easy to go to John’s site tomorrow because it is our market day so there are plenty of taxis and if I get an early taxi MAYBE I could even get back in the same day. Maybe. Maybe not. But it’d be worth it to get my hands on some eggs and some phone service.

Also apparently you can watch French news (like CNN equivalent) at 8pm every night at the video club with the satellite dish. I opted not to go tonight because I’m tired but also because I can never understand the French newscasters (they talk fast and speak real French with real French accents!)

So this morning I was motivated to organize my house, take stock of everything I have, and put everything I’d want sent to me in the States in the suitcase. I was cleaning and organizing and making lists until mid-afternoon. And then I started to smell something rank. I had suspicions it was a dead mouse. At that moment, Bella and his friend came over and so after the respite of news I made them come inside and help me tear apart my living room looking for a dead mouse. We did not find one. They were like, “just spray some air freshener”. And I’m like…that is not going to work. Then they said just to wait and it will stink more and then we’ll be able to really locate where it is. I didn’t really smell it this evening, though, so maybe it was just the gone-bad cheese that I had been using to give them the poison. But on the plus side I did find one of Yogi’s bones under one of the couches and he’s pretty happy about that.

I had keke for dinner again. I am really not on the rice and sauce train right now. Keke’s where it’s at.

I Read A Lot

2009-09-27T15:30:00.000Z

Well I read all three Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit in the last couple of weeks. Have not had the endurance to pop open The Silmarillion, but maybe sometime soon. Dude, Peter Jackson is a GENIUS. I gotta say, movies > books. Because in the movie, he incorporates stuff Tolkein only put in the Appendices, he mixes up the different chapters within the books so that the stories of Frodo/Sam intermingle with the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli storyline and Merry/Pippin soryline, where as the books put each all together rather than interspersing chronologically. And the dialogue I feel was improved in the movie, even stuff like the healing of King Theoden and the Arwen/Aragorn relationship being fleshed out. Oh and the Elves coming to help at Helm’s Deep! I thought that was a really important part in the movie but it never happens in the book. Basically, an extremely well done trilogy, Mr. Jackson, hats off to you. The only grumble I’d have is the ending. In the book they go back to the Shire and have one last battle and it explains what happens to everybody until you are satisfied that they lived real lives before the various ends and in the movie there’s like a half an hour of reunions and goodbyes ad nauseum and yet you are still left wanting because they all just go away on a boat. So that’s my only gripe.

I also just finished the second “Twilight” book: New Moon. I am really glad that I don’t have all four books in my possession to read one after the other as though I were chain-smoking because I think I would really, really start to hate Bella. I mean she already annoys me by the end of one book and the only thing that keeps me hanging on is Edward. And Alice and Carlisle. So this book was especially painful because they were missing for 75% of it and I had to make do with trying to like Jacob for pages upon pages (kept flipping forward to find out when the name “Edward” returned to the story – it was a LONG way away). I suppose it’s just that Bella is so OBSESSIVE, like SERIOUSLY obsessive and I just want to slap her and yell, “THERE ARE OTHER THINGS IN LIFE!!!” Even when Edward IS around I want to do this because seeing your high school boyfriend ALL DAY EVERY DAY is weird. I mean, never not together, because he stays in her room at night. It’s like. Well, DUH, when he’s not around you won’t be able to function, you have built YOUR ENTIRE WORLD on him. I dunno, I can’t describe it. I just think there’s a way to get across the all-encompassing, mind-blowing love part of it without her being a whiny little obsessive teenybopper. End rant. Yes, I am going to continue the series. Federico is supposed to send me #3 on the October mail run. I don’t know how many copies of #4 we have, but probably not more than one or two so it’ll be awhile yet before that gets around to me.

I put out mouse poison tonight. I hope those mice die. I’m sure I’ll be sad when I toss their cute little dead bodies outside but seriously, having to put all my food on lockdown, like LOCKDOWN (they eat through Ziplocs and worse – candy bar wrappers…AND the zippable rice sack I had, discovered that hole today). I mean, I have to sleep with my tomato wrapped up in a bandanna in my bed inside my mosquito net with me so that they won’t find it. And every morning I’m cleaning up ridiculous amounts of mouse poo and different wrappers torn to shreds and I’ve just had it. It’s war.

Let’s see, what else is going on? The Secretaire Communautaire told me that if the dude has refused to go do the estimate on the pump at the school then I should just go ahead and fix the other pumps. So I’m going forward on that project. Although at this point the next time I’ll be with a computer and able to write the proposal and get it to Abdoul won’t be until probably Thanksgiving. Or maybe Halloween… Although I guess I could write the proposal on this and then just have to create the budget, format it, and print it out next time I’m at a computer. So yeah. Gonna get started on that.

There are soon going to be people living in the house next door to me. They have built up a whole concession wall (we won’t be able to see each other at all) and cooking and storage rooms and latrines/shower stall thingies so rumor has it there will actually be people living there now. Which I suppose is nice, even though I won’t be able to see them at all. But maybe I’ll get invited to dinner.

Lately my interest in rice or toh and sauce has gone into a nosedive. Tonight I got keke for dinner. She was really happy because I haven’t gotten keke from her in AWHILE. And since it’s cucumber season, there was cucumber on it! But of course my rice lady was pretty much like, “Yo Oumou, WTF?” Who would have thought pounded manioc can taste so good? It’s kinda like tangy sawdust (gotta drink a lot of water with it) and they put Maggi (MSG), salt (as if the Maggi didn’t have enough), peanut oil with some kind of herb or something in it, onion, cucumber (tomatoes if it’s ‘mater season) and a piment/okra mixture. It’s freaking delicious. Sometimes she has fish balls too but I only get those for Yogi. Sometimes I put avocado (avocado season is over, I am sad) or tuna on it. I suppose you could also buy a hard boiled egg from her to slice on it but the eggs in my town have usually been boiled so long ago that they are going bad by the time you get around to buying one so I steer clear. I don’t know why there are no fresh eggs in town when there are so many hard boiled eggs, and eggs stay good longer uncooked. It’s a conundrum.

I’m going to Kindia on Thursday so I’m going to buy a whole crate of eggs. But stop myself from consuming all 30 in like 2 weeks. Because by the end you get really sick of eggs. And then a month later you’re like, “Man I wish I had some eggs!!”

Also I found a clandestine little hut in my town that you have to be really secretive going in and out of where you can buy beer (also, incidentally, the only place I have seen anyone actively cultivating beans). So I am going to make beer battered something sometime soon. Like maybe beer battered onions. YUM. If only I had some Ranch dressing. I wouldn’t drink the beer because it has been sitting hot in that hut for quite awhile. I can’t imagine it being delightful. But maybe if my village someday gets a fridge…

Ramadan Is Over

2009-09-21T15:30:00.000Z

Well today was the “jour de la fete” (holiday – end of Ramadan). Apparently there was some discord about when the fete was (apparently they celebrated yesterday in Conakry). I assume it is the Imam who decides the day. My Outhouse Calendar said it should be today. So…iron clad fact, right?

Anyway as usual I was lying awake when the prayer call came out at 5-something AM. For some reason I am always awake for the prayer call. Maybe Allah is trying to tell me something. So I fade in and out of sleep and then after the 6am prayer the drums start. Or I should say, THE drum. Evidently it is a big drum. I assume one person is beating on it. It sounds like they are doing it in my backyard and the sound resonates on the walls of my room. Slow, measured, then quicker, then fast, then it stops for a few minutes and restarts.

Yogi thinks this is Allah coming down on him and is FREAKING OUT. He is barking and whimpering and skittering around the room. Me, I might have been able to sleep through the drum, but not Yogi making pagaille (chaos) everywhere. I try letting him into the living room. He starts scratching at doors. I try putting him outside but am so annoyed that I don’t get the rope all the way round his neck and he is loose so I have to chase him into the yard in my little shorts and tattered tank top, braless, but luckily he has to pee and that is apparently more pressing than escape so I catch him without much trouble. Then somebody calls my name from the road while I am dragging him back to the porch and I don’t even look and just hold up my hand and in English say, “not right now!” Attach Yogi to the rope and slam the door without another thought. Whoever it was must think I am really rude. Oh well.

This doesn’t stop Yogi. The drum is still freaking him out and I end up having to get up and dressed by 7am. Around 9:30 I decide I want to buy meat for the family I have been eating with of late so I abandon LOTR: The Two Towers and go to the Carrefour, where I can hear the butchers chopping cows on the tables from my house.

It is a PAGAILLE (chaos). There are dozens of people crowded around the two tables, everyone wanting some meat for the fete. The butchers are throwing back knives and hatchets and I dunno how nobody got one in the eye, but apparently they are swift to get out of the way. I see Caw Ousmane (member of the family) trying to get meat and I tell him I want to buy a kilo for the family and he says he will get it. So I give him the 7 mille (not even $1.50) that it costs for a kilo of beef and then sit with my friend Ousmane the Boutiquier (yes, everyone is named Ousmane) and watch the pagaille unfold. Apparently Caw Ousmane does not have sharp elbows because he was one of the last to still be trying to get meat.

Dude. The smell of butchered cow is FOUL. I couldn’t stand at the table. I could barely sit back at my friend’s boutique watching. Forget the stench, the bloody parts, the hide, the kids hitting each other with the dead cow’s tail, people walking away with its feet, women coming up with entrails in their hands asking Ousmane the Boutiquier for a bag to put them in…GROSS. And on top of all that the sickening smell.

So anyway Caw Ousmane had to go pray and I didn’t know if he ended up getting any meat but when Aissatu Bah brought me rice and sauce in the evening, there was beef in it so I guess he did.

Anyway I gave the family 5 Fantas (3x the cost of the kilo of beef), a liter goblet full of candies (WWF gum complete with temporary tattoos in the wrappers, lollipops, toffees) and a pot of popcorn. They thought the popcorn was HELLA doux and wanted me to teach them how to make it. I can, it’s easy, but the corn they grow here isn’t sweet corn so it isn’t exactly the same, but it’s something.

So I did the Attaya thing while they ate their bon-bons and then when it started to rain had to run home to get my solar charger out of harm’s way and then Aissatu brought me rice and sauce (but it was soup sauce so it was Yogi who enjoyed it) and we sat on my porch awhile talking while we had the hardest rain we’ve had in awhile and I filled my buckets. When it waned a little I loaned her my rainjacket to run home in and then went out and took my bath, which ended up being in the rain. Since it was raining and getting my hair wet I just washed my hair (hadn’t done that for almost 2 weeks!). Then I put on music and did a bunch of chores till Bella came over to go to the dance.

We went and got Aissatu Bah and Hoodia found us on the road. It was like the last time I went (all kids) because we were early and it was raining. But I don’t mind the kids because they’ll dance with me if I take their hands and originally we were up on the raised part where the DJ is but when we went to sit down I had a sudden urge to run into the main crowd and make kids dance with me. So I did. It was crazy. Once I got down there, a circle formed around me, everyone wanting to see what the white girl was doing. So I danced with some kids like that before my friends pulled me away. Dude some of those little kids can DANCE. And have really cute clothes. Like cute white shirts that glow in the blacklight.

Anyway my friends were spent by like 10:30 which I found shocking so I went home even though I was ready for more.

And now I sleep.

The REAL Truth About Ousmane II

2009-09-20T15:29:00.001Z

So today Ousmane II came over with his friend (can’t conjure his name but I know his face and he was the one who brought the exterminator over and he has been friends with Ousmane II since they were kids [his name is Bella]). Ousmane II was troubled, to be sure. He informed me that when he had borrowed my phone yesterday and hiked up the mountain and talked to his family members, basically it had come down that he is obliged to go through with this marriage.

Here’s the story. So his mom lives here in my village and “vraiment”, she is old. Ousmane II is her youngest child. Evidently the others have not come through for her. She needs help around the house. It’s women who help around the house. If Ousmane II takes a wife from this village, she will be obliged to help his mom at the house. I do not doubt she needs the help. So basically, Ousmane II is obliged to accept this proposal because his poor mom needs someone there and none of his other siblings have provided this help (although there appear to be at least two twenty-to-thirty year old women living there plus a couple of younger men [like teens]). I ask if he is going to stay here, then, after the marriage (which will happen in the next 2 months). He says no…he is still going to leave the country.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE MARRIAGE??? Basically it is like contracting free labor. In the States we would hire a nurse or find someone who wanted free room and board in exchange for helping around the house. Here you TAKE A WIFE to fulfill this role. But the husband is IN NO WAY obliged to stick around at all. He’s gotta send her money, support her financially, but be around? No way. I spend a lot of time on my porch as Ousmane II is sitting there with my face in my hands, smiling sadly, shaking my head, and they want to know what I’m thinking and not only is it difficult to explain in French, it’s difficult to explain culturally because they do NOT understand the idea of LOVE. Of all-encompassing, earth-shattering, mind-opening, body-overtaking LOVE and I have NO IDEA how to explain it. I don’t even know that it ever happens here!

I know he wants more. And then Lundi and a friend showed up at my house (first time she has been here) and Ousmane II looked very malcontent about this indeed. I did my best to seem cheerful and told her I needed her to make me a complet for the wedding and brought out my two big fabrics (enough fabric for a whole complet, anyway) and asked which was more “jolie” (literally, beautiful but also, appropriate) and they picked the dark blue one with the cracked footprints on it and I said I would either sketch her what I wanted or find a complet of someone’s to use as a model. She was agreeable.

When they left, Ousmane II did his duty and walked them to the gate and said some words and when he came back looked thoroughly troubled and it came out that he did not know how they tracked him to my house but then his friend (Bella) said he had told them he was coming here before they left for my house and told them they should join them and Ousmane II relaxed a little.

It makes me want to scream. I try to explain to them why I find it awful. That if someone’s parents told them they had to marry someone in the States, the person would be like, “NO! It’s my life!” Parents don’t have control like that. But there is just more at work here. This is certainly not America.

There is no McDonald’s. That sounds really stupid, but I’m not talking about the food or the convenience (we have fast food, it’s called rice bars). What I mean is that you can’t just get a job like THAT. I know, I worked at McDonald’s. Anyone can get a job there. You might screw it up and get fired, but you can get a job. And little by little save money and little by little make your way to doing what you want to do. WE HAVE NO IDEA how easy this is for us in the States. In the States there is NO REASON that someone with the will should not make their way. None at all. Nothing stands before you, my friends. Go out there and conquer the world. Or at least the city you live in, because in America anyone can do it. And now I truly understand The American Dream. And why everyone would want to have it.

And while I mourn for my friend, at the same time it is literally just like conscripting hired help. Because in Guinea you can have 4 wives. And he is still going to leave the country. So when it comes down to it, by doing this marriage he will help his mom, but it doesn’t ACTUALLY hold him down at all. He can still go to Cote d’Ivoire or wherever and if he ever has the lucky chance to actually fall in love, he can still do that. So in a way he actually might kind of be fortunate. Not the way we are fortunate in the States. But fortunate enough that someday he might find happiness. And maybe that will be enough. Now if only Lundi had the same options.

The Truth About Ousmane II

2009-09-19T15:28:00.001Z

So I had a dream last night that Ousmane II came over to my house and I was like (in French): “Oh, do you have something you want to tell me?” And I can’t remember how the rest of the dream went but I don’t think it was pleasant.

Today, this morning, as if right out of my dream he shows up on my porch. I open the screen door, holding Yogi by the bandanna that is his collar and I say, “Oh, is there something you want to tell me?” He smiles guiltily (or maybe it’s bewildered?) in the way he sometimes smiles and I think it MUST be true and either during the night or very early this morning someone told him that I was a bit on the warpath and he has come to “m’inform” as “bientot” as is polite. Turns out my poor friend Ousmane II is in a lot of distress.

I mean, I thought it was weird when Aissatu told me he had gone to ask a village girl to marry him because I KNOW he has bigger plans and it turns out my instincts were right.

Ousmane II was very troubled. After the first smiles he did not smile again as we sat on the porch. He had actually come over to borrow my phone (as he often does) so he can hike hours up a mountain to make a phone call. He wants to make a phone call because of the following: it was not he who asked Lundi to marry him but actually Lundi’s family who went to Ousmane II’s family to propose the union (this is how rumors get started). Ousmane II’s family is receptive to the idea as they have been pestering him to find a first wife since he is getting old (he is 23). However he has no money, no job, no bride-price and a yearning for MORE which is the strongest deterrent of all.

I felt SO BAD for him as we sat there on my porch. Usually we are very talkative but I had nothing to say. I have never dealt with arranged marriages before. I can’t even really CONCIEVE of the idea. He was pleading with me for advice and all I could say was that I had to think about it.

Then he started saying he was going to “voyager” (go away), and I was like, “to Conakry?” And he was like, “no, to another country.” And I said he would have to go somewhere where they speak French because if he wants to get anywhere he has to at least speak the national language. So we start brainstorming African countries that speak French (never before would the internet have been more useful). Senegal, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire (uh, Ivory Coast), Morocco, Nigeria, Niger, Benin, Togo, Cameroon – there are several countries we wonder about but don’t know what language they speak like Equatorial Guinea and Angola. We rule out Mozambique because they speak Portuguese (I know this from my “Nominee Dinner” in LA – girl sitting at my table was headed to Mozambique and was learning Portuguese…plus Solana [volunteer here] was offered a third year spot in Mozambique and will have to learn Portuguese if he accepts it).

In my heart I want to tell him that if he has a stout heart he should stay in Guinea and try to make a change. But it just seems so HOPELESS. You need a MOVEMENT, and a movement of strong-willed people with influence and money (sad to say) and numbers behind them to really affect change in a place like this (#9 on the Failed States Index). What I finally admit is that if someone is content to make a life here just building a couple of huts and maybe a house (not the way an American would think of a house) and working the land to get food and making Attaya all day and having a family that will also probably never leave the village, one can do well here. If you have no greater aspirations of leaving the village and having a “more interesting” life, you can definitely live in Guinea without problems. But if you want to DO something, if you want to GO places…it’s not like the US.

In the US anyone can get a job. Even if it’s McDonald’s anyone can get a job. And you can save your money, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and ACHIEVE YOUR DREAMS, no matter what they are – if there’s a will, there’s a way.

I have this horrible, cold, sinking feeling for my friend Ousmane II. He would have to be EXCEPTIONAL, incredibly smart, cunning, creative, to get out of this place and even achieve what even the LAZIEST American has just by birthright and it makes me want to SCREAM. I have no advice for my friend. I mean, I guess, learn English. That can slowly get you places somewhere like this. You could work for an NGO or for Peace Corps and maybe go to university and get a grad school scholarship in France or England. But Ousmane II never finished high school (though his French is strong and his mind inquisitive).

I don’t want this for him. HE doesn’t want this for him. And I have NO ADVICE. And it is driving me crazy. More than ever I want to DO SOMETHING and I have nothing I can do. And to make it worse he has always counted on my advice. And yet I remain silent.

As they say…”la vie est dificil aux Guinea.”

The 8 ball said I will not be able to help him, that he will not marry Lundi, that he will leave Guinea and he will be happy wherever he goes. The 8 ball knows all.

Ousmane II's Getting Married

2009-09-18T15:26:00.000Z

So I was not allowed to go to mosque today because I am “unclean” aka I have my period. Wasn’t allowed to pray at all, actually, just sat on the couch while Tanti Aissatu did her prayers. Then ate.

After eating we went back to the house and I had a couple bites of rice with boro-boro sauce but I was already stuffed so mostly I just sat in the circle with grandma and Aissatu Bah. Then AB told me that my friend Ousmane II had married. I freaked out. I was so pissed to not have been invited to the wedding.

Turns out it’s just that he asked the bride’s parents yesterday for her hand in marriage (how effing old-world romantic) and then apparently took off for the Boke area to discuss this with his family members (the ones that don’t live here). He was just in Boke last week. Probably asking them if it was ok to ask her to marry him (as his first wife, anyway). In fact we took a taxi back to our village together from the bigger city to the south and he didn’t say ANYTHING about his plans. Nor did he night before last when he briefly stopped by before prayer time.

Anyway, I will deal with him next time I see him. In a very American offended way. Cultural exchange. I reacted the same way when my American friend John got married without me and NOW is having his ceremony without me which to be honest depresses me very much but hey you can’t expect everyone to put their shit on hold just because you moved to Africa for two years, right?

The bride is to be Lundi (in French, it means Monday – probably the day of the week she was born). She speaks some French. I kinda know her. She is kinda a boisterous personality and I have always liked her. I dunno if she’s exactly who I would have assumed for Ousmane II, but I guess that’s because I always fancied Ousmane II to have a more Western mind (especially after spending so much time with me) and waiting for love rather than family pressure. But honestly I don’t know that people here understand the concept of love the way we Westerners do.

At any rate it’s not a twelve-year-old, nor a timid, submissive type that I don’t really know so in the end I am happy for him if this is what he wants. Could do a LOT worse than Lundi! Lundi is good times! Huzzah!

Apparently Lundi is somewhat of a tailor so I am gonna make her make me an outfit to wear to the marriage of the cloth I have bought and is just sitting around. Aissatu Bah said she is going to do the same.

I told Aissatu she had to go with me to Ousmane II’s house tomorrow to demand an explanation because if he’s gone and if Alpha Conakry is not there, there is not much French to be had. I might relax this plan. But I was pretty much on a warpath earlier. I guess being on the outside of another marriage from someone I would expect to confide in me got to me in a way.

Life isn’t THAT different here, when it comes down to it .

Yogi Likes Riz Gras...and other food-related adventures

2009-09-03T14:09:00.000Z

So tonight the rice lady had riz gras! Yogi about flipped. He wasn’t that interested in the rice, but maybe it was because he was full from all the veggies on top. There was manioc, eggplant, bitter eggplant, okra mash and a little piece of fresh fish. At first I thought he was going to leave the okra mash but he ate it! My dog likes vegetables. Is that weird? At one point he was eating so forcefully that he flipped a little splash of piment in his eye (I had removed the piment to prevent an accidental wolfing down of it which would inevitably end in cries of pain). He started dancing around and putting his paw up to his eye. I was burshing my teeth and laughing at him. Is that mean? I’ve had piment in my eye PLENTY of times. It was just funny to see a dog reacting in the same way.

So the fumigator dude is up in Ian’s village today and tomorrow and I’m leaving for Conakry on Saturday so he can’t come get rid of my chicken bugs until I get back, which won’t be until next weekend. Bummer. But hey I’ll have him do it right when I get back and then maybe they’ll be gone! YAY!

So everyone in my village keeps asking me if I am doing the month of Kar’em. I tell everyone, “of course!” with a guilty look on my face and the people who know me better know I am just humoring them. It’s just easier to say you’re doing it and then they’re like, “good!” Cause if you said you weren’t doing it you’d have to spend five minutes explaining why NOT. So it’s just easier. And I AM doing the evening prayer and meal AND going to mosque on Fridays so I’m sort of doing some of it.

I have to meticulously hide any eating I do in my house. It especially sucks because I don’t like to cook in there right now because of all the bugs. So I try to do really simple stuff as fast as I can and just not think about the bugs swimming in my tomato sauce and eat quickly before they descend on my plate. Today I made a pretty good tomato sauce without a recipe. It always comes out too oily. I use too much oil when sautéing the garlic and onions. And it would be awesome to add mushrooms into the mix. Next time I just have to remember to drain the oil before putting in the water and tomato paste. And the other day I made a salmon-onion-mayonnaise sandwich (thanks for the salmon, dad!!). It was way better than I thought it was going to be.

I saluer-ed Ian’s friend in the market today and like everyone else he asked if I was doing Kar’em and I said “of course!” And he asked if I was praying and I said yes. And he said how many times a day? I said once and twice on Fridays. And he gave me this superior look and said, “Ousmane Bah is praying THREE times a day!” EFF YOU IAN .

So today I was talking to my friend Ousmane II because I wanted to know if he was going to go back to Conakry on Saturday or not. He borrowed my phone and hiked for hours the other day to get service and said that everything was ready for him in Conakry so he could go. But he doesn’t have money for the transport. So it turned into this whole discussion and what really turns out is going on is that he has been waiting for this dude that said he was going to lend him some money to start “reselling” (which is how LOTS of people make their money here, I mean it’s basically what all the boutiques do, let alone the guys who resell gas out of liter gin bottles on the side of the road), but the dude keeps saying, “wait.”

He says he wants to go to Conakry just for the week like me and “get affairs in order”. I tell him this is a stupid idea. He would be wasting 3x the money on transport if he did this because instead of paying just once, to get back to Conakry, he’d have to pay twice to get to Conakry and once to get back to the village. I told him he should not go back to Conakry until he can go back to stay. He had NEVER realized how much money it would waste to do it his way, all he thought about was that there were people in Conakry he could get (borrow?) the money from.

Then I told him he should stop waiting for this dude who says he is going to lend him money because let’s face it, he probably isn’t, and even if he does, who wants to be beholden to someone else? I tell him that in the US, if we can’t find work doing exactly what we want to do at any given time, YOU STILL WORK. You find whatever way you can to make money while you are waiting. I teach him the phrase, “time is money.” He seems to understand that. I tell him he can keep waiting for this guy to come up with the money but while he’s waiting, why doesn’t he MAKE SOME OF HIS OWN money. This thought has never occurred to him before. That even if it is “petite a petite”, any money you make while you are waiting is still putting you ahead, even if it’s only a few mille. Why waste your time waiting? He is having a freaking epiphany.

Then we start to talk about some ways he can make money. The first thing I bring up is Ian’s coffee scheme, in that people grow coffee in terrace lines on the mountainsides, which will help their rice, harvest the coffee and ship it up the road to the market just inside Senegal where they can sell it for BANK. Because Senegal is on the CFA, and let’s face it, is in a lot better shape than Guinea, and coffee is in high demand up there. I tell him even if he doesn’t have the time to grow the coffee and set up business like that, he can just go to the bigger city south of us, buy coffee from farmers there, take it up to Senegal and still make a ridiculous profit simply transporting and reselling coffee. Yeah, he’d make a LOT more money if he was growing the coffee, but a shorter term moneymaker would be in just the reselling.

The other things I suggest is stuff he can do in Conakry, like the transforming and repackaging of products like making jam and dried fruit, which he could sell for big profits during the no-fruit seasons (like right now). I also tell him he could work in the village with the builders or carpenters or fence-makers and gain that skill then go back to Conakry where he can make more money doing that very thing, a recommendation letter from his boss in hand. This has never occurred to him either.

Basically I tell him not to just sit around and wait for something to fall into his lap, which is what I feel is a lot of the problem with poverty and development in Africa. People are just waiting for something to fall into their laps and it doesn’t work like that. Unfortunately many of the NGOs who work here operate in just this manner: they just give stuff away without making sure it’s really needed or really sustainable and it’s bred this plague of an attitude that if you just sit around doing nothing for long enough, Allah will provide. If Guinea keeps going on like this, they’ll never pull themselves out of poverty. And that’s the whole point: they need to pull THEMSELVES out, not wait for a lifeline from some faceless outsider. But I guess there are some Guineans you just have to TELL that to and then they finally understand. Like my friend Ousmane II. After our discussion today I think he is really motivated to get off his butt and make some money so that he can have what he calls “a real life”. More power to him. I hope he inspires others. That would make it sustainable .

Ode to Petzl

2009-09-02T14:08:00.000Z

Petzl – you make one HELL of a headlamp!! I couldn’t find my headlamp for two days so thought it somehow got stolen though I couldn’t figure out how. Then I was hauling a dirty bucket of water outside and VOILA – floating just under the surface: my headlamp. Apparently Yogi had knocked it off the back of the couch and that’s where it landed. And stayed for two days.

So after two days submerged in dirty water, I’m thinking – this headlamp is done for. It was totally waterlogged and the batteries had even started to rust in the battery compartment. But I thought, “what the hell” and put it out in the sun to dry out anyway. And then I stuck some new batteries in it AND IT TURNED ON!! I couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.

So next time I’m at internet I am gonna log onto the REI website and write a rave review of my beloved headlamp. Two days submerged in water and still working good as new? Quality purchase.

Bug Mystery Solved...I Hope

2009-09-01T14:07:00.000Z

I can’t believe it’s already September! When time passed in the States I didn’t really notice it but here it’s like every time you flip a new calendar page there are new birthdays to write down! New holidays! New Mondays to write “M” on, meaning I need to take my Mefloquine. New travel days to note. It’s kind of exciting.

Anyway. On to the bugs. Two people have now told me they came from my chicken. DAMN YOU MERYL!!! She is not living here anymore but the fact that the bugs have been here SINCE Meryl was living here turns my stomach. Today when I get up Alysun comes over (turns out he is the half-brother [same mom] of the dude who built my house and then mysteriously died) and I put together a bucket of dirty clothes, eat some oatmeal (send me more instant oatmeal!) and then spray ¾ of the “Insect Killer” can throughout my whole house (all doors and windows closed). Alysun goes to the Carrefour to shoot the shit while I am getting ready but I finish so I watch the carpenters (brick layers?) who are building next door as they come over to take some of the pile of sand that sits in my yard. Yogi barks. I yell at Yogi.

Alysun comes back and meticulously folds all my dirty clothes before we finally leave for the creek. We go to HIS creek…the one close to his house, which is kinda far, instead of the closest one to MY house which is Balla Bappo but requires traversing down a big mountain with a not-exactly-bien-fait path.

Anyway. We get to the creek. Yogi hates water and doesn’t want to go across but Alysun forces him. I’m like, “Yogi you’re getting wet anyway cause I’m gonna wash you!” In the back of my mind I hope there are no snails in the creek so I don’t get schisto (Chris-Heijn recently had schisto). It’s utterly curable but having any illness here is a pain.

So I wash all my underwear while Alysun washes all my other stuff. I am useless at washing clothes here and if I have to do it I do it in private so people don’t laugh at me.

I bathe Yogi, which is more like, I wrestle Yogi in a creek, but he gets wet and gets soap on him so that’ll do (that’s kinda my philosophy on washing my clothes, too…hmmm….)

Anyway when I get home the bugs are still going strong. I make all kinds of valiant efforts over the next couple of days, removing all food and dishes from the house, baking them in the sun, two more bug bombings. The can says it should be able to successfully knock out 80 rooms. I used the whole can. I have two rooms. Bugs STILL going strong. All I have managed to kill are several crickets whom I found in their death throes and gave mercy stomps to.

So apparently there is a fumigator dude. And he can come to your house and spray and in 30 minutes everything is dead. I wonder how much this costs. But I will pay it, I am so sick of these bugs. And as an added benefit, it’ll kill any other unwanted bugs currently shacking up chez moi. I wonder if it will kill the mice, too. I am sick of them. I can’t kill them myself because unlike bugs they won’t die quick and I HATE watching things in their death throes. Today I tried to lock one of the mice out. I saw him heading out the back door so I stuffed a cloth under it and have vigilantly guarded it whenever I have to go outside. He probably has several ways in, though. I remember when my mice were not bothersome. What happened to the good old days? I think they got spoiled.

Bad Couple of Days

2009-08-31T14:06:00.000Z

Ever spilled boiling hot oil on your dog? I accomplished this feat day before yesterday. It’s those damn stoves they gave us. They’re so tilted, it’s not the first time I’ve spilled something on my stove. But this time…Yogi happened to be going through the garbage box under my new table and I was frying some potatoes and it happened so FAST – the pot tilted, I saw Yogi in it’s way, I grabbed for the pot, it spilled on him anyway, he SCREAMED, I finally got hold of the pot, put it on the ground (the only f-ing stable place in the whole house…lord how I miss stainless steel sinks…) and started to run after Yogi, looking for the most accessible water. Which happened to be in a full bucket, with no goblet. So I’m chasing Yogi, yelling for him to stay still, he’s SCREAMING, hauling a 20 liter bucket, trying to dump it on him at every possibility but pretty much only succeed in soaking my house. Eventually I hit him with the water a bit and he realizes it will make the pain subside and I get a goiblet and chase him with THAT (much easier) and manage to finally pour water over all of his burns. I feel like an ASSHOLE. I mean, I sure as shit didn’t do it on purpose, but he still blames me for it. His coat is still oily. I’m sort of waiting for the burns to heal a bit before I wash him with soap.

Insult to injury: melted my rubber spatula because in my haste I threw it on the ground in the pot which then melted it as I chased Yogi. So I’m writing home for another. I use it EVERY day.

But just like a dog, he doesn’t REALLY blame me. Or rather, I should say, he still loves me. Although he has been acting out of the ordinary, but not necessarily when it comes to me. Poor guy.

It hasn’t made him stop rummaging in the trash.

Today I discovered a tiny white bug infestation. By tiny I mean the individual bug. By infestation I mean it is EVERYWHERE, though you have to look close for it. I was so angry earlier. I thought it was coming from the flour in the cupboard, so I took all the food off the second shelf of the cupboard and all the dishes off the bottom shelf. Washed ALL the dishes. Someone on the road told me if all those dishes were just for me, I should share them with everyone else (Oumou Tokara). Then I washed all of the food items. It did not appear to make a difference. When I had let them dry for awhile I looked again and those FUCKING bugs were all over them again. I was so pissed by the time Alysun came around and told me tomorrow I should spray my house with the insect killer and he’d help me wash my clothes at the marigot (“They’re in your clothes now, too, you have to wash all of them”). I feel them crawling all over me. When I tried to make dinner because trying to clean up after them made me too late to go to dinner with my family, they were already all over my freshly washed utensils and dishes. I wanted to cry.

Tomorrow I am going to unleash an entire can of that insect killer on my house (it did a good job down the latrine) and go to the marigot and wash everything I can think of, plus Yogi, because I have to leave it be for like three hours before I can open the door again. I hope I murder them all.

And it just reinforces the need for Tupperware – SEND ME TUPPERWARE PEOPLE!!!!

In the end I think the bugs MIGHT be coming from the Parmesan cheese my mom sent. I mean it has been AWHILE since I opened it. And if that’s the case it means I’ve been eating forkfuls of them in my spaghetti and cheese for a week. Gross.

Mosque

2009-08-28T14:05:00.000Z

So I had my first mosque experience today. It is the first Friday of the month of Kar’em or Ramadan and last night I told my “family” (closest thing I have to a family here but still not the same as the families of many volunteers ie: I do not live with them) that I would go to the prayer with them today and somebody yelled at me from the road: “Oumou! Allon prier!” I considered for about 2 minutes and then donned my African complet and went to their compound. There were a lot of people there doing their ablutions. I eventually awkwardly did mine with Caw Ousmane watching me and I know I didn’t do it right but maybe Allah thinks it’s the thought that counts?

Then Grandma told me I had to wear a bubu (apparently what I was wearing would not fly at Friday mosque) so I followed her into the bedroom and she gave me a bubu to change into so I did even with little Ibrahima in the room (he’s just a little kid and boobs don’t mean anything here plus I was wearing a bra). Bubus are freaking awesome. They are like wide-armed mumus. Quite comfortable. Then she gave me a big white prayer shawl (apparently she didn’t approve of the shawl I brought even though Fatoumata ended up wearing it to the prayer so I dunno). Anyway I looked like a real African lady walking into the mosque courtyard. We did not go into the actual mosque. I assume it was filled with men. There were a couple rows of men out in the courtyard, too, and the women were lined up behind them, all dressed exactly like me. So thank you grandma!!

It drizzled some and I cursed myself for having left my solar charger out in the latrine because I spent half of mosque just worrying about it getting too wet and breaking.

I think I almost have the prayer movements down but I still don’t know what they murmur during the prayer. Afterwards all kinds of people congratulated me for going to mosque. They all know I am not Muslim but I think they all want to try to convert me and even if they don’t, they appreciate my gesture to understand. I look at it like Teale said, “when else are you going to have an opportunity to live like a Muslim??” But she goes farther than me as she actually lives with a family and fasts with them. I am not fasting. At least not yet. I would do it if I lived with a family and had people to commiserate with. I think it would be hard. In fact I know it would.

Because when I go back over there at sundown and go over to the old lady’s house with the women we do the prayer WAY faster so that they can eat ASAP. So there is “gosi” which is rice with sugar, sour cow milk and apparently peanut butter. And “burie” which is fonio and sugar. And then “toh” which is a manioc mush (I can’t even think of something to compare it to in American cuisine – maybe kind of like a giant gnocchi) swimming in sauce (so far it’s been peanut sauce or boro boro sauce which is a dried leaf derived from what is basically a weed). I honestly don’t mind toh at all. I mean, yeah, rice is a bit better, but I really don’t mind it, especially when the sauce is good. Ian said the same thing. So for those of you possibly headed to West Africa, don’t stress the toh, man…it’ll be ok.

Also, don’t tell Traian, but I eat with my hands. I mean, I KNOW my right hand is clean because I scrub it with soap before I go over and THEY are all eating with their hands so even if I did do the spoon thing, the spoon isn’t any cleaner than my hand and it’s still gonna be eating out of the same bowl as the rest of the hands, so…there you go. Plus it tastes better when you eat it by hand, I’m telling ya.

But if you come visit me I’ll get you a spoon if it weirds you out .

Le Mois de Kar'em

2009-08-26T14:03:00.000Z

So it’s Ramadan. It started when I was in Conakry over the weekend and when I got back to my village it was in full swing. In fact when I arrived about 8pm Monday night (threw out a leap of faith and went all the way to the gare in the city south of me once we got there from Conakry at about 6pm – which Ian forewent – and found a car going all the way to Ian’s village which could drop me off at mine and silently thanked God for the good luck). We stopped in the only sizeable village between the city and my village just as night had fallen so that people could eat. Not the passengers, really, because if you hadn’t brought food with you, you were SOL. I was just planning to eat when I got home so I was just like, “eat fast”. And then this old lady came running up to the car and asked if everyone who didn’t have food wanted to eat “toh”, which many volunteers describe as snot in slime sauce or something like that. I actually didn’t think it was so bad. The lady even brought me a spoon which I was grateful for because all day a small child had been coughing on my hand in the taxi and I was NOT about to eat with my hand but I had my second toh experience. I don’t mind it at all, really. I mean, it’s different from rice but I don’t think it’s bad at all.

The lady told me next time I come through that village I have to ask for her and she’ll feed me but the taxis never stop there, it’s a drive-through village, but if I ever have the chance I will look for her anyway.

So yesterday I was on my porch talking to Ousmane II about the state of my service in Guinea (it still amazes me the level of maturity and detail I can talk to Ousmane II about) and Caw Ousmane walked by and I told him he needed to invite me to pray and eat dinner with them during the “mois de Kar’em” and he said I could come that night but I already had plans for my dinner so I said I would come tomorrow at 7pm. So today I showed up freshly bathed, in an African complet, ready to go to mosque and eat with the family. Turns out I actually got treated like a WOMAN! Which means I did not get to go to mosque. Instead I navigated my way through a bunch of manioc with the other women to a house I had never seen (it was hidden) where I prayed on a mat with Aissatou and Fatoumatou and this other lady and then we gathered around a bowl of toh with peanut sauce and ate with our hands (I refused the spoon offered as I had recently washed my hands with soap). I am of the belief that “chose” with sauce tastes better when you eat it with your hands. Even though the Peace Corps Medical Unit does not recommend it. Hasn’t made me sick yet.

In fact I have been less sick in the time I have been eating street food and with my hands than I was when I was eating individually prepared plates with my host family during training. I assume my system has adapted.

Anyway after the toh we got the bowl of (shoot I forgot the name AGAIN but it is basically rice and sugar – Gosi), which I also enjoyed with my hand. As soon as we were done I just had time to thank the old lady who had hosted us before we went back to the compound and sat down for some attaya (meticulously brewed green tea). Then I said I had to go buy rice for Yogi at the Carrefour (since I can only buy rice at night now, no one’s there in the morning which means I sleep in until 9 or so). I asked if I could come for prayer and dinner with them every day for the month of Ramadan and they said “of course!”. Then Aissatou walked me home where I got my bowl (in America it would be a pot) and got Yogi rice with peanut sauce and meat – which I may have enjoyed if I wasn’t already stuffed from my evening Ramadan meal.

I wish I lived with a family because then I would fast with them for the month of Kar’em but since I don’t, I can at least impose on Aissatou’s family for prayer and dinner for the month. Still gonna sleep in as long as I want and have an instant oatmeal for breakfast but hey, I’m all alone here.

Pictures

2009-08-22T17:18:00.015Z

Bromance:

Chicken Farm:

Nachos:

Yogi:

I was trying to take a picture of me and Yogi, he was not coooperating:

Yogi keeps petites at the gate:

Joe's New Facebook Picture:

Barack Obama - He Touched Everybody:

In reality I work for National Geographic:

Alpha:

Nene:

Ousmane II:

Erich's Pants are SWEET:

Happy Peace Corps Volunteers (Me, Erich, Corrina):

The girls I brought to girl's conference (Maimouna and Aissatou):

Dance Party at Girls' Conference:

Peace Corps Volunteers are a bunch of thinkers:

I climbed this:

One More Early Night Should Do It

2009-08-11T17:01:00.001Z

Turning in early for the third night. Started to feel almost normal before I got in bed and didn’t puke at all today so I might be good as new in the morning!

Tonight had another stroke of culinary genius and made skinless potato skins with the REAL cheese my dad sent (FYI Sargento colby jack cheese sticks make it without a problem and since they’re individually wrapped there’s no rush to get through a whole block before it molds). I skinned the potatoes because Traian told us to, even if you’re boiling or frying the potato, and I usually do what Traian says since he’s the doctor. Then I cut them in half and hollowed out the middles of each half. Fried them like french fries. When they were done I put slices of cheese in the middles, put them face down in a frying pan and heated it. Heated it a bit too long because I walked away from the stove to get my camera so the cheese REALLY melted and turned almost to liquid but still tasted fabulous. Only things that would have improved it were salsa and sour cream! Might try to do it again in Conakry where I’ll have salsa and sour cream…and bigger potatoes.

Anything’s possible when you put your mind to it.

Glad I should be back to health tomorrow as I have stuff to do around the house (it’s a wreck…happens when you don’t do any tidying for three days…and have a dog) and have to finish up the beds in the pepiniere with my counterpart (who I think knew I was still sick so didn’t even ask to go today). Going to Conakry Monday for the project review Tuesday-Friday. Then back for 2-3 weeks before I have to go BACK to Conakry for the VAC meeting. But that’s ok, because I don’t think I will have time to do any of my errands during the project review week.

The only thing that REALLY stinks is finding someone to watch my dog. It’s difficult when you don’t live in the same compound with a family, your reliable dog sitter moved away (Sous Prefet), your friends are in Conakry for the vacance, and 75% of the people in your community are afraid of dogs. Can’t wait for Ousmane to come back from Conakry. I’m going to turn him into my dog sitter. I find young guys are good dog sitters because they typically aren’t very afraid of the dog and they have their own sleeping huts so he can sleep inside with them. But that won’t be until after both of these Conakry trips so still have to figure it out. Wish me luck.

Medicament

2009-08-11T17:01:00.000Z

One thing that drives me CRAZY about Guineans is their absolute love and dependence on medicine. ANY time I say I am sick, or I don’t feel well, or I have a cut or an infection, the first thing out of their mouth is, “well, have you taken the medicament?” I especially loathe this response when I have a cold. THERE IS NO CURE FOR THE COLD, FOLKS! I just tell them I am eating a lot of oranges to get Vitamin C. THAT’s the medicament for a cold.

It’s like at the first sign of illness they run off to the health center for medicine. Our Dr, Traian, makes us wait at least 3 days before we take anything. Because most of the time, it clears itself up after 3 days! We aren’t even allowed to take anything stronger than Pepto Bismol for diarrhea. Know why? BECAUSE YOU HAVE DIARHHEA FOR A REASON! Your body is trying to get rid of something so you need to LET IT get rid of it! If it can’t do it itself after 3 days, you get to take Ciproflaxcin (I think it’s an antibiotic) to help it out. But NEVER Immodium AD.

Guineans seem to have no concept of this. That things will get better on their own. It’s like when the Western World introduced medicine to Africa they jumped on it like free rice and insist on taking it for everything. Which is, frankly, irresponsible.

It’s like the malaria thing. Where EVERYTHING is malaria (though I have seen a few cases of Typhoid, too, which is encouraging). Like yesterday when I told my homologue I had been vomiting and am sick, he asked, “Is is malaria?” And then, “did you take the medicament?”

First of all, no, it’s not malaria. These aren’t even the symptoms of malaria. Secondly, you don’t just go taking medicines willy-nilly, especially ones your body/the disease can build up resistances to (like antibiotics).

But at the same time it’s dangerous to just tell them to let well enough alone. Because then maybe they’d go way too extreme on the other end of things and never go to the doctor. It’s frustrating.

Death

2009-08-10T17:00:00.001Z

So yesterday I heard wailing and crying. If I hadn’t been so sick I would have wandered out to see what was going on. I was pretty sure somebody had died and then I saw members of my friend’s family walking by my house with mourners whose faces were covered with scarves.

Today my homologue came by and told me that it was Aissatou’s (one of the girls I took to girls’ conference) dad who had died, up in Guinea-Bissau. Her brother, Alpha, a good friend of the last volunteer, was there when it happened and sent word to someone in the big city south of us who brought the news here. Apparently the man had been sick for a couple of years so it was not completely unexpected, but still a sad event. Apparently Aissatou has gone au village for mourning. Tomorrow if I feel better I am going to go over and offer my condolences to the rest of the family. I feel bad that I didn’t go today but after my homologue left I was puking in my bucket again because I just can’t stand for very long. Or at all.

I’m supposed to go do the other beds of Gmelina at the pepiniere with my homologue tomorrow but I think I will ask if we can push it to Wednesday because even if I feel better it’s good to give it a buffer day, you know?

Also apparently the new Sous Prefet moved in yesterday. Haven’t met him yet. Too sick to go greet. Same as giving condolences, if I feel better tomorrow I will go do it.

October 15 is Global Day for Handwashing with Soap. The need for this? Unlike in the Western World, here in the Developing World people barely even wash their hands with water, let alone soap (fact made worse that their left hand is used for wiping after going to the bathroom). In fact I don’t even know if you can buy soap in my village (other than the dish/laundry soap)! If you can’t, that’ll be one of the goals, to get a boutique owner to start carrying soap. I am going to do events with the school and the health center. Any suggestions for specific activities? One thing I want to do is set up public hand washing stations at the two places (school and health center). I can also teach the “lave tes mains” song (which goes to the tune of “Frere Jaques”. I also had the idea of giving away bars of soap as prizes, but for what? I know I have a lot of creative friends out there, so send me any ideas you have.

Mail Run Has Been Good to Me

2009-08-10T17:00:00.000Z

Well, I barely slept at all last night, scrunched up into a ball trying to make the pain in my abdomen go away. Then I spent the whole day feeling miserable and puking. I kept down the canned peaches I ate for breakfast (thanks again, Mrs. Figas!) and two fruit leathers (for awhile) but the lunch soup came back up. Then Daffe got here around 3 with the mail run and THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!

I received a book and a card from Megan (thanks Megan!!), and a package each from my mom/Bob and my dad/Marci. These packages might go into the package hall-of-fame. Indian food, cheese, soybean seeds, dehydrated jalapeno dices, CADBURY CRÈME EGGS (not even squished or melted or anything!), tuna steak pouches, Easy Mac Alfredo, other heat-and-eat meals (essential for when you’re sick), cute tank tops, I can go on! What a lift to my spirits it is to not only get packages but get AWESOME packages!

If I didn’t feel like crap I’d bust open a box of wine (which I sent to myself this mail run) and get creative at the stove. But, alas, I do feel like crap and don’t know if I even want to waste any of this fabulousness on a dinner that may end up in my puke bucket an hour later. Like my lunch did. Note to self, the Harmony House Chickenish Soup wasn’t that good going down and REALLY wasn’t good coming back up.

However, fruit leather? Not horrible .

I ended up going with one of the Easy Mac Alfredo cups for dinner. That stayed down. As did a Laffy Taffy and Crème Egg (couldn’t help it!).

Couple of notes: While there was no major destruction or mouse-attacks on either of these packages, would like to once again remind senders to put pretty much everything in ziploc bags. Not only does this ward off mice, and keep everything protected if something explodes, but I use the bags over and over again. The only damage done this time around was that my dad sent a bunch of loose hard candies and somewhere along the way they melted a bit and so everything is sticky. Didn’t ruin anything, though. Also, when sending tuna/salmon, stick with just the steaks in the Bumble Bee pouches, we can get canned tuna in Conakry (Starkist, even). Just a couple of tips to maximize your package’s potential!!

Blech

2009-08-09T16:59:00.000Z

So I’m sick. Not,like, Africa-sick, the way many volunteers have managed, but all day I have felt lightheaded and like I want to hurl whenever I stand up. So I spent pretty much the whole day laying down and am turning in really early. Like, it’s 7:30 and my teeth are brushed.

I had my usual rice and sauce for breakfast and then an instant cup of vegetarian chili with a Laughing Cow triangle, a couple of Starbursts, a couple of quarter-sized cookies my Guinean friend sent me. I skipped dinner altogether. Didn’t have the energy to make it, nor did I think it would make me feel better.

Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow. Tomorrow is mail run day! I hope my mom’s package got here, I am on package withdrawal. It’d be cool to get a letter, too (HINT HINT). John should be back from the States so maybe he got me some stuff too and put it on the mail run. Or maybe he ended up coming home with the mail run in which case I’ll see him tomorrow. And Ian should be sending my bike back, if he made it back to his site last week. I got kind of worried because he left on Tuesday and on Thursday his friend Conte said he hadn’t seen him in Ian’s town. So I had an early morning freak-out session where I imagined Ian’s body on the side of the road but I know it is just paranoia and an overactive imagination and everything is fine. It will be proven when my bike gets here tomorrow. (UPDATE: Bike got here. Ian’s alive).

I have started writing. First thing I’ve started since I got here. As usual all I have are the beginning, the characters, the backstory and the setting. Now I need a plot. Plot has always been my struggle point. I’m really good with characters, dialogue and tone, but plot? Not my strong suit. It’s going to be a script but I’m going to do it the right way and beat sheet the whole thing out before I really sit down and hash it all out. Maybe my mom can send me one of my screenwriting books for guidance.

It’s funny, because for most of my life I have written a LOT. I used to write (basically, romance) novels in high school. Scripts in college. Short stories always. Poetry when the mood strikes. But for the eight months since I’ve been in Guinea, journals only. It will be good to exercise my brain in that way again.

Culinary Genius

2009-08-07T16:59:00.003Z

So sometimes I fancy myself a bit of a culinary genius at site, considering the lack of ingredients, refrigerators and spices. My staple meal is either potatoes or eggs with: onion, avocado, Laughing Cow cheese and piment sauce. But sometimes I manage to eat rather well.

For example today I wasn’t very hungry for dinner but not not-hungry enough not to eat anything. I HAD been planning to enjoy my single yellow summer squash freshly picked from my garden, sauteed with onion and garlic but when I chopped it open it had worms inside it. And I had already chopped up the garlic and onion, which were already sitting in oil. Sigh. So I raided my non-perishable trunk and found a little packet of instant tomato-basil soup (hey! Send me individual instant soup packets, people!) that I had gotten when I was in Dakar. It expired in March, but since when has a little thing like an expiration date stopped a West African Peace Corps volunteer? (answer: probably never) So I enjoyed that (it was delightful, actually) followed by an entire mango. Quite a satisfying dinner and very simple.

Other achievements:
Spaghetti parmesan with peas – my mom had sent me a big canister of parmesan cheese (does not need refrigerating) which I had been waffling about what to do with when one day I had a stroke of genius and made spaghetti boiled with some dehydrated peas I had brought from the States. This I covered in parmesan cheese. For the sauce I sauteed onions in a little extra peanut oil and poured the whole mixture on top. It was REALLY good. I enjoyed this concoction for about 2 weeks until I ran out of spaghetti. I still have a little bit of peas and quite a bit of the cheese so I am sure I will enjoy it again sometime soon. And when the peas run out, replace them with green beans (also dehydrated).

Tacos, especially breakfast tacos – It is shockingly easy to make tortillas (although they are not as big or as thin as I would like so basically they resemble corn tortillas but are made of flour). Speaking of tortillas I tried to make chips the other day by frying tortillas in oil and while it’s not too bad it makes a better dessert, lightly fried and then dusted in cinnamon and sugar. Anyway, tacos. Basically once you’ve made the tortillas you can put scrambled eggs with sauteed onions, Laughing Cow, avocado and hot sauce. If you’re real frisky you can cook up some beans to throw in there, too (I have dehydrated beans from the States which makes having beans SUPER easy). Or if you are lucky at market, tomatoes.

Potato skins and an improved version:

I got cheese in a package and went for bar food.

Fairly American Meal:

Green beans, potatoes, tuna fish steak. Life is good.

I picked my huge cucumber today so tomorrow I have to figure out what to do with it. Maybe I will just make a potato-cucumber salad (boiled potatoes, cubed; diced cucumber and onions in a mayonnaise-oil-vinegar sauce…with a Maggi cube). I also have more mature beans to pick so I may boil those up for a snack tomorrow, too.

I am really sad about the summer squash thing, though. Tough break.

Twilight

2009-08-06T16:58:00.000Z

So I just read the first Twilight book. I already saw the movie, I think several times, because when it got to country people played it nearly nonstop in the Conakry house TV room as there was always somebody who hadn’t seen it yet.

Book WAY better than movie. In some ways. Like, the book was WAY sexier than the movie. The movie had that ONE kiss and the book has a half dozen or so. And other, sexy, mouth-against-throat sort of moments. Stuff that could be REALLY hot on screen (and still, I believe, PG-13). So I was a bit confused about why the screenwriter (or maybe director) chose not to make the script as sexy.

Also, in the book I find Bella a bit more needy and/or annoying than I did in the movie. In the movie she seemed strong, self-assured, independent. In the book she seems…juvenile. Also Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, maybe not QUITE as Adonis as the book leads you to believe he will be but the actress that plays Bella, Kristen Stewart, has this strange smoldering sexuality about her that I first noticed from her 15 minutes in Into the Wild. Great casting on THAT front. If I had read the book before seeing the movie I wouldn’t have pictured Bella the way Kristen Stewart plays her but I am glad that I have that to go on in my mind’s eye now because it makes Bella a bit more tolerable.

Anyway. Directly after finishing Twilight, the book, I am all crazy and romantic and thinking about every relationship I’ve had and how NOT Edward all those guys are and how someday I’ll find my Edward and it will be freaking FANTASTIC (if less obsessive…the book is REALLY obsessive…maybe because she’s 17). And then the next book I crack open? “Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys”. I’m an idiot. I was hoping to get a laugh. Now I’m just depressed. “There is no horse.” I got about an hour to think that someday there might be something amazing in life and now I’m back to the old, pessimistic, “dudes are dudes and they’re idiots and self-absorbed and unperceptive and are NEVER going to sweep you off your feet because not only are they too fucking LAZY, but it would never occur to them, because they don’t FEEL the way that women do.”

And I just want a milkshake.

Water Woes Wasted

2009-08-04T16:57:00.000Z

Hey I think it was my Dad’s birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday, Dad!

Well, in some strange twist of fate, the pump at the mosque has been completed almost exactly on time! I couldn’t believe it. When I heard a couple of months ago that it was going to be finished July 31 I got my hopes up but quickly pushed them down because nothing EVER gets finished when people say it will in Guinea. But sure enough, someone came by my house a couple of days ago and said the pump is working! And people keep walking by my house with water on their heads so I know it must be true!

This gets me really excited. Because I don’t have to worry about water anymore! That was pretty much my biggest problem before it started raining all the time but now I won’t have to worry and I can have a dry season garden! Yay! I have already started trying to decide what I will plant. I will also need to make an enclosure just for the garden because cows keep jumping my fence. So I think I will plant: sunflowers, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cucumber, soy and hot peppers (hey somebody send me jalapeno seeds I hear they grow well here!). I might try for bell peppers again, too. Will have to buy a couple in Conakry and make sure I properly dry and store the seeds this time.

Yippee!!

In other news, Ian made the mistake of foregoing John’s site (because John wasn’t there) and continuing to my site day before yesterday on his way back from Conakry. He spent all day trying to get a taxi out of here yesterday and it never happened (most taxis and all the trucks were going to the other village North of here whose market day it was). Yep, le transport est dificil ici (the transport is difficult here). Instead of waiting around again today he asked to borrow my bike, strapped all his stuff on the back and took off. When people in my village realized he was going to bike all the way to his village possibly in the rain their mouths dropped and they let out the infamous African “Heeeeeeey?” He is sending my bike back to me on the mail run Monday and then I am going to send it to Conakry and have them replace some of the gears whose teeth are worn down and don’t work. Hope he made it!

Then I had a rather productive day. I cleaned my water filter which I almost never do and certainly not the recommended every week (don’t tell Sue!). I also washed all my bandanas and hand/kitchen towels (tomorrow: underwear!). Then I made tortillas and fried them to make chips which I tried to eat with this cup of nacho cheese sauce I had but it was awful so I just ate the chips instead. Then I was sitting on my porch making organic fertilizer out of leaves again (yesterday at the carrefour as we were eating keke for dinner this kid was chopping branches off a gliricidia tree in front of his boutique so I asked if I could have them) when Ousmane II came over with his friend from Conakry and they started to help me and then the dude who took me on the epic expedition to the banana trees also stopped to help. I explained to them (as I have to Ousmane II before) that the leaves of this tree are a really good fertilizer and you can use it instead of chemical fertilizer more often and for longer (indefinitely, really, whereas chemical fertilizer gives diminishing returns after a couple of years and ultimately is bad for the soil, water and environment in general). I don’t think they believe me. They talk about it in Pular and I can understand them saying “leaves” and “fertilizer” and then laughing like I am some small child who they are just humoring. They don’t believe me when I tell them the tree is called “gliricidia”, not “cassia”, heck my HOMOLOGUE barely believes me when I tell him that and only sort of started to believe me when Abdoul was here and was like “yep, that’s gliricidia. It’s good for fertilizer.” Anyway while they don’t believe me at least they know how to do it and maybe one day someone will be really desperate for fertilizer and not have the money for chemicals and just say “what the hell? Might as well try it! Maybe that crazy white lady was on to something!” Maybe.

It’s a nice thought.

Green Beans

2009-08-01T16:55:00.003Z

You know what are awesome? Green beans. Also, potable water.

So all the beans in my garden look the same. One started to rot so I picked them all. There were about 10-15 of them. I boiled them. Then I put salt on them and ate them. There appear to be at least two different kinds. One has a tougher pod and bigger beans and the other is like a green bean. I planted green beans, scarlet runner, and bush beans, that I can remember.

GREEN BEANS ARE AWESOME! I wished I had more. I don’t think I’ve had that much protein or that many vitamins in weeks. My body is still tingling!

Speaking of my garden, while I was gone at girls conference cows got into my yard. They ate all my corn. Even my sweet corn. I am kind of sad about this. They trampled some of my hot peppers. However they did not eat my hot peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, zucchini, squash or beans. Just the corn. And I have a HUGE cucumber out there and a good sized yellow summer squash. I did not harvest them today because I don’t know when I will eat them yet.

I am thinking I will harvest the summer squash tomorrow and saute it with onions and garlic and enjoy it with my last remaining Bumble Bee Salmon Steak pouch (send me fish, people!! I got this one from Kate!) and maybe boil a couple of potatoes too. That’s a nice American meal. I was able to get potatoes really cheap in Mamou! The only thing that stinks is transporting them. I gave some of them to Ousmane Iis family because they watched Yogi all week while I was gone.

I (well, Corinna) also bought a whole crate of eggs (30) from the chicken farm by ENATEF in Mamou. It cost 20 mille or 4 dollars. So I now have a crate to bring eggs back and forth with. And 30 eggs to eat. Although one broke in transport and one Yogi just pulled out the crate and broke it so he got to eat it (I have now put the crate out of his reach). I figure they will last maybe 2 weeks or so before I eat them all. Did you know that from the time an egg comes out of the chicken, it’s good for 2 months (non-refrigerated) if you don’t get it wet? You can test this by putting your egg in a cup of water. If it sinks, eat it, if it floats, don’t eat it. However, don’t test all your eggs right when you get them cause if you get them wet you have to eat them the next day. I am going through these eggs so fast that I think I will start buying 2 crates at a time…60 eggs, 3-4 weeks? Is that bad for your health?

So on to potable water. Since all of our pumps are broken, I have started drinking rain water. Les Stroud drinks rain water straight on Survivorman so I figure I should be good, right? Well, here is the system: when it rains, catch water in buckets from streams coming off the corrugated tin roof:

Pour water into bidons using a funnel made out of a plastic bottle top, filtered through a bandana (this removes a lot of sediment):

Put twice the amount of Sur-Eau (basically bleach) in it than is recommended:

Let sit at least 30 minutes. Put recommended amount of bleach in top of Peace Corps-issued water filter:

Fill with water:

Wait 30 minutes. Drink. So far it’s been fine. I figure it can’t be worse than river water, right (and that’s basically my only other option). Water filters are awesome. It’s no wonder people here are sick all the time when they don’t have pumps, let alone filters.

The idea of sticking a glass under a tap and drinking the water that comes out baffles my mind at this point.

Night before last I called John in LA on the phone because I was having a mental breakdown and needed to hear voices from the States even if I could only afford 2 minutes. When he answered, he said, “hold on I have to put my Bluetooth in”. I about died. I mean, I’m worrying about finding water to drink and bleaching my apples (which can only be found in Mamou and Conakry). What kind of riot would a Bluetooth wireless piece cause in Africa?

Then I called Leggett and talked to him for two minutes but at this point was out in the hangar and all the girls were standing in a circle, singing and clapping and dancing so I couldn’t hear him too well and I just said, “can you hear them singing?” For some reason I was biting back tears a little bit, I think because from the awkwardness between the girls on the first day of the conference for it to now be them all singing Guinean songs and dancing in a group as though they had known each other forever was inspiring. When I hung up with Leggett I went and joined the dancing. They push you in the middle and watch you dance semi-awkwardly as they sing songs and replace names with your name. I think almost all the volunteers ended up out there at some point and every time a new volunteer would show up, they’d be shoved in the middle and all the girls would cheer.

Life is different here.

My Chicken

2009-07-22T16:46:00.001Z

Speaking of my chicken I think I just heard her sqwawk like she was being attacked and when I opened the door she was gone and my gate was open. I hope somebody didn’t steal her. That would be mean.

That night: As I was sitting on my porch, talking with Crazy, Ousmane II and Alpha Conakry, relating my early morning fears (hadn’t heard from Meryl all day and she had not tried to come home even though it was an hour or two past the time she had been coming home), Crazy said, “Hey, Meryl!” And pointed at the gate. Sure enough she was up there preening. I hastily took Yogi inside and put him in the bedroom but before I was even able to walk back out on the porch she was coming to the door and my friends were calling, “stay there! She’s coming in!” But I had to open the screen door so that’s what I did and then she just marched inside, way easier than any of the past ten days. I was amazed and grateful that my chicken came back. I mean, she’s just a chicken. And she poops A LOT…but she’s my chicken. She’s part of the family. Just like Jimminy (the cricket who lives by the door and sings every night) and Barry, the dog who’s about Yogi’s age that comes by to play (read: hump) every couple of days, and the mouse (forgot what I named her but saw her the other night! And this morning at 5am she knocked over a pot and scared the daylights out of me as I was dreaming about eating pizza [now plotting to kill mouse for pizza offense]). One time a frog squeezed under one of the locked rooms’ doors and there have been a fair amount of lizards who have found their way in but I don’t name them because I typically only see them once.

Which brings me to my other houseguest, the suspected bushrat! So one time when I went out to my latrine there was a GIANT rat out there who scurried up the palm frond enclosure and paused at the top, it’s foot-and-a-half-long tail trailing over the side. He only left when I threw a rock at him. Then there were peculiar animal droppings near the corner of my enclosure, which had been broken by termites and strong wind (yay for rain!). It’s not super broken, Yogi hasn’t even tried to get out that way, but something smaller than Yogi could get in and out. Like a giant rat.

He keeps leaving droppings that look like black beans right in the spot where I bathe and yesterday when I was fixing to go out there I opened the door and heard a scuffle, Yogi ran out and apparently just sniffed him and then he hurried around the enclosure. At the time I was too scared to jump out there like Yogi but kicked myself for a long time afterward for not getting a glimpse of the animal who had just left a fresh pile of droppings in my shower area.

I am going to give him an unpleasant name because I dont like him.

Washing Machines

2009-07-21T16:40:00.002Z

Last night I dreamed of a washing machine. Do you people over there in the US realize how freaking AWESOME washing machines are? You can stuff it full, pour some soap in it, if it’s not yours put a dollar in it and YOUR CLOTHES ARE CLEAN 30 MINUTES LATER! And THEN you can put them in a DRYER and 45 minutes later they are DRY and CRISP and WARM and ready to wear! I am fairly sure the vast majority of you reading this have always taken your washing machine for granted. DO NOT. It is a mistake. The washing machine is one of the greatest inventions known to man. And to think that at one time in my life having to “wash my clothes” was an event worthy of foregoing a night on the town or other event. BULLSHIT! With a washing machine, and a dryer…THAT IS NOT A USE FOR AN ENTIRE SUNDAY MORNING FOLKS! NO MORE EXCUSES! GO TO CHURCH OR SOMETHING (or at least Sunday brunch…with mimosas made with fresh squeezed orange juice…and eggs…with cheese, fresh mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes…and MorningStar farms veggie sausages…). Is my recent train of thought that has been snaking back to life in the US showing? Like a neon sign? Let’s cut the power (we don’t have any here, anyway…)

This morning I went to get rice and sauce, like I do every morning at precisely 8am. If I go after 8am, she could be sold out. And even if she’s not sold out it won’t be super hot after 8am and Allah knows I love my rice and sauce toasty. So it’s sweet potato leaf sauce. Not my favorite, but I was expecting it as yesterday was peanut sauce, the day before manioc leaf sauce and I believe the day before that was peanut sauce. My sauce preferences as of the moment are as such: manioc leaf sauce (mafe hakko bantara), peanut sauce (mafe tiga), a tie between maganye (eggplant sauce) and sweet potato leaf sauce (mafe hakko pute), and wallowing at the very bottom, soup sauce (mafe soup). I would say my rice lady (who is now my rice lady’s sister since my rice lady is off giving birth in Conakry) has peanut sauce 40% of the time. Manioc leaf sauce 20% of the time and the other 40% is split between the others. I wish it was 60% manioc leaf sauce and 40% peanut but hey man that’s life.

ANYWAY. My homologue Mr. Diallo had said yesterday that he has malaria. Don’t freak out. They say EVERYTHING is malaria here. If you don’t feel good, want to sleep all day and maybe have a fever, it’s malaria. So today I see him on my way to get my rice and I say, “ca va la sante?” (how’s the health) and he says “ca va en peu” (it goes a little). On my way BACK from rice, he waves me down and walks up and asks if I would like to come work at the pepiniere today. Now, I am halfway through Harry Potter 6 and itching to finish the series but I realize that, you know, planting trees is my JOB, so I say yeah what time? He says now. I look at my rice and say, “Well, I’ve gotta eat NOW…” So he says afterwards come to his house and we’ll take the moto down to the pepiniere (3k or so) and plant a bunch of Gmelina. I say ok. I get home and look longingly at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I eat as much sweet potato leaf sauce as I have piment (hot pepper) for (bless my rice lady’s sister, she always gives me a full piment! Piment makes rice and sauce 10x better!) and give Yogi his breakfast (sweet potato leaf sauce and rice) and almost grudgingly put everything inside, shove Yogi in the house (he fights), grab my motorcycle helmet and trudge over to Mr. Diallo’s house.

It’s not exactly his house. He has a room in this house. Rama has one of the other rooms. There are 2-4 more rooms occupied by other people but I don’t know. The building is pretty much next door to my house.

Have I mentioned that when I go by my house after coming from somewhere else and I look at it as a villager I would think the following: my garden is pathetic, what a HUGE house for one person, why hasn’t she cut back her yard (no lawn mower, dude!!), why is her back window open when she isn’t there (because if I did that Yogi would be in complete darkness when I am away and there’s not much to steal through the grate on that window, anyway), and her porch is messy. I am a poor excuse for a Guinean.

At any rate, we go down to the pepiniere and on the short moto ride I am once again reminded that when I get back to the States I’ll probably want a motorcycle. And the moto trip through West Africa we’ve been talking about as a Close-of-Service trip seems more awesome every day.

Anyway. We’re working at the pepiniere. Mr. Diallo says that the groupement planted their gmelina direct seeds too close together so they are not getting big enough and fusing (I think that’s what he said). He says we are going to make our own little field near the entrance and show people how it’s done (“they’ll know it was people of the forest who did this!!”). So we start working. He’s doing all the hard work and looking at his gaunt frame I think, “that dude does not need to be burning any more calories than he already is”, but I know he won’t let me do it mostly because when I try to do it it’s laughable so I don’t try except for a brief five minutes where I take up the coup-coup and try to start cutting 2 foot tall weeds and he calls over, “I’m going to do that!” So I content myself by sowing all the seeds. This is done by squatting and nearly breaking your ankles after a few hours, putting 2 seeds side by side about 2 inches from the last pair. Through six troughs per bed. For six beds (we still have 4 more to do). I am almost hoping we’ll content ourselves after 2 beds. No way. After 3 beds he asks if we should stop or do one more. I’m like what the hell, let’s do one more! So we do and he asks if we should do one MORE and I’m like what the hell! All I’ve got on my planner today is Harry Potter so let’s plant these seeds! I am saying this wearily cause my tummy’s growling. He decides to make 2 more beds instead of one to round it out at 6 and I faithfully seed them, squatting on my haunches.

After we finally finish the sixth bed, he seems really happy. Exceptionally happy for thinking he has malaria. So I think it’s worth it because he is really happy, though I have no idea what we’re going to do with these trees once they grow. I mean I assume we are going to plant them somewhere but he has not enlightened me as to where.

So when we finish he looks at his watch and says “we’ve worked until 11:09!” And in my head I’m like “WHAT? That’s it? We got here at 8:30!” So I get home and I do a bunch of chores, clean up after my chicken, wash dishes, rinse buckets, finally take a bath in which I wash my hair (long time coming!) and when I get back to the living room, finally ready to crack back open my HP thinking it can’t be later than 12:30ish, I look at the watch and it says it’s 4pm. I think my watch must have been crushed by my water bottle in my bag and has reset itself so I turn on my village-unusable cell phone as the only other clock I have and it says the same thing and I’m like, “No wonder my stomach is screaming at me!!” Either I misunderstood Mr. Diallo or his watch is way off.

So feeling thoroughly productive I crack open Harry Potter and don’t get too far until Hoodia comes over. Hoodia strictly speaks only Pular, I actually don’t know if she has ever been to school a day in her life, but we actually manage to communicate many things, including what’s in my garden, that there’s a mango tree growing out of my compost pile, that Yogi is way too excitable, the reactions to Yogi of all the kids at the Sous Prefet’s house (she is his cousin), that she has not yet found a husband (who’s rushing her? I think she’s 16) and that I like her shirt. Universal sign language, my friends. It works. As do my 25 words in Pular (I have no idea how many words I know but it is woeful considering I was installed almost 6 months ago.

Anyway it was a long and productive day. And Yogi didn’t even pee in the house even though I was gone for 6 hours. MIRACLES HAPPEN!

…but I still want a washing machine.

Guineans and Sex

2009-07-17T16:35:00.002Z

So tonight I had a rather illuminating conversation with a friend of mine.

It all starts when I ask if there’s a marriage going on (heard singing) and he says yes and I say why the heck haven’t I been invited to a marriage? And he says he’ll invite me to the next one. Then we start to discuss the ages at which people marry here, and he says that it is not uncommon for a 12 year old girl to marry a 50 year old man. And I say this is not good because girls that age are not ready to have kids and whatnot. He basically says, “if there’s grass on the field, play ball.” I explain that while her TUMMY might be ready for babies, her HEAD isn’t. “Ca c’est vrai” he says.

We start to talk about excision. I say it’s not good. It’s bad for women’s health, bad for birth and bad for sex. I ask why Guineans excise women. He says because if they are not excised, they’re sluts, basically. He says he has had sex with both excised women and non-excised women. He says he prefers the non-excised women (whom he claims are all Christians from the Forest region) because they are happy to have sex. Excised women, he says, cry during sex, and afterwards tell you not to touch them. I want to cry just sitting there on my porch.

I spend an hour trying to make him (and another friend who happened by, at this point) understand that, “if non-excised women AND excised women BOTH have sex outside of marriage, why excise?” They come to the realization that it’s pointless after mounting the argument that excised women have to be forced into sex before marriage (and after, really) and non-excised women don’t, they want to do it. I say, “but they are both still having sex before marriage, n’est pas?” A look of comprehension finally dawns on their faces. They condemn excision.

I push further and ask why it’s ok for him to have sex outside of marriage but not for women. He says, “because I’m a man!” DUH. I tell him he is no better than a woman and that everyone is equal.

Multiple wives. I am trying to explain why having multiple wives and ridiculous numbers of children are one of the main causes of poverty. While this message eventually gets through, one thing they both insist on is that there are way more women in the world than men and it is necessary for men to marry more than one. I tell them this is absolutely not true and throw out a figure I think I heard once: 51% of the population are female while 49% are male. They say it is more like 60-40. I ask them where they heard this. They say the teachers tell them this at school.

I explain that there are people in the United States that don’t have sex until marriage. Already knowing that we typically don’t get married until 20 or later, he says, “you mean there are virgin women who are 20??” And I say, “of course. Men too.” His mouth drops in an expression of utter disbelief. He says you can’t tell whether or not a man has ever had sex. I tell him in the States there is no reason to lie about NOT having had sex. Men only lie about HAVING had sex. He asks why people, 20 years old, would never have had sex. I say some of them are religious and do it because the bible or the Koran or their religious leader said so. Others because their parents might kill them (not literally), others because they don’t want to do it before marriage and still others who can’t find anyone to have sex with them. At this last group, he balks. “Oumou!” he says, “aren’t there prostitutes???” I choke on my popcorn and it takes me a good five minutes to recover. Then it takes another ten minutes to get across the idea that in the States, it is not cool to sleep with prostitutes, as it is here. If someone sleeps with prostitutes in the States, they don’t talk about it. And a prostitute is a lousy way to lose your virginity, anyway. I try to explain the concept of love. They don’t really understand that here. Here you marry for money or kids or because your parents tell you to. Marrying for love is completely foreign.

Then he hits me with the real bombshell. “Well, can’t they just force a woman to have sex with them?” I realize that when he told me that he didn’t know ANYONE under 20 who was a virgin it was because half of them were rapists. I ask him if his friends have forced women to have sex with them. He says, “of course.” I don’t have the heart to ask if HE has, afraid to know the answer. I tell him that is illegal in the States and if you do it you go to jail. He asks if that’s true even if the woman is your wife. I say yes. He is flabbergasted.

I am depressed.

Expedition

2009-07-16T16:30:00.002Z

So Ousmane II tells me he wants to take me on a “petite expedition” and after my last journey up a mountain I’m like, whatever, bring it on.

So this time I wear proper shoes: Keens way better than Chacos for hiking, take note!! Even though I am in a sour mood when he comes to pick me up in the morning (he is late, and I hate that, and I am starting to get into my Harry Potter book and resent the interruption), it turns out to be a good day.

We walk for a long time down the road until we get to a fluorescent green patch and then veer off toward the mountain. I’m already knowing we are going to climb the mountain and this time I’m prepared, what with my Keens and my camera. We walk through rice fields, saluer-ing everyone out there working and get to the foot of the mountain, where all the big boulders are. We start to climb. The views are freaking spectacular. I make a mental note to take any visitors from America up here.

We climb for awhile, resting on rock benches every now and again. Ousmane II keeps asking me if I’m tired and while I may be WINDED, I’m not tired, and we push on. During one of our rests, looking out onto the valley below containing rice fields, then trees and mountains beyond, he confesses he did not think I would even make it to here, let alone keep going. I’m thinking…is this because I’m white or because I’ve got a few extra pounds on me?

So we keep going and we get past the bouldery region and enter the forest. And I’m thinking we’ve already seen the spectacular views, where are we going? So we forge on for awhile and after a long time I finally say, “ok, I admit it, I’m tired”. And he’s like, “let’s go back.” So we take 3 or 4 steps to go back and he’s like “yeah I was going to take you to the end of the mountain where you can look off the edge and it’s like waaaaaaah!” And I stop dead in my tracks and I’m like…”well, how much farther IS it?” because I am interested in this. He says, “it’s far. We’ll do it next time.” I relent, but then curse myself all the way down the mountain because I know it would have been really cool to stand at the apex of the mountain and scream out onto the valley. Still kicking myself right now. However, we did go to the cliff face, which runs all along the mountain and inch to the edge and fearfully look down. As Ousmane II said, “it would be really bad if you fell out here.” Cause, you know…there’s not even a hospital, let alone a mountain rescue squad.

After a three and a half hour expedition, we get back to his house and eat rice and manioc leaf sauce, then sit around drinking attaya for awhile with some neighborhood males.

For living in the capital and having been all the way through school, Ousmane II still seems to know shockingly little about the world and still has a wide-eyed innocence about him when I explain things, even though he is 23 years old.

We talk about airplane travel and he asks how long it takes to get to the States via airplane from Africa, thinking it took between 1-3 hours. His first guess is 3 hours. When I look at him like he’s crazy he says, “2 hours? 1 hour?” And I say, “It took 24 hours to get from NYC to Guinea when I came here” and his jaw drops. Granted, not all of that was actual flight time, but c’est ca.

Then I start telling him that there are satellite phones on airplanes and you can call people with them. He is floored. I don’t even bother to explain the TVs in every seat where every person can choose their own movie. For free. That might make his head explode.

He keeps remarking, “eh, les blancs!” or, “oh, white people!” And I tell him, “it’s not just white people, in America we have black people, Asian people, Indian people, latin people…all religions, all nationalities…” I tell him there are plenty of black people who have invented stuff and get caught off-guard when he disbelievingly says, “like what?” I was kind of shocked that my brain came up with nothing. In my defense I can only name like 5 inventors, one of whom is Thomas Edison, all of whom ancient and, incidentally, white. But luckily a sort of educated older dude who was there having attaya with us (who I think may have actually been to America but at least has definitely been on an airplane) came to my rescue and said, “DUH, there are black Americans! They invent stuff, too!” And I say, “there are black Englishmen, black Germans, black everything, not just Americans and not just Africans.” And then we launch into the discussion about how in America, if you are a citizen, you are an American. It doesn’t matter where you originally came from, if you’re an American, you’re an American. Everyone in America comes from somewhere different except the American Indian. Which launches a whole discussion about American Indians and what languages they speak.

I probably have my most productive discussions with Ousmane II, including one where I tried to explain homosexuality, surrogate mothers and in vitro fertilization. His reaction to all this new information can be summed up by one thing he said once, “la vie est grand!” or…life is big.

It sure is.

Schools Out For Summer

2009-07-11T16:24:00.002Z

Saturday night and I’m in bed before 8:30. Yogi is not happy, whining, creating pagaille in the room. He still has lots of energy and wants to stay up and run around. But I have a cold and I think lots of sleep will do me some good. And I’m the Alpha dog so he just needs to calm down and accept it.

Having a chicken is not as easy as they made it sound. She poops more than any other animal on the planet, I swear. I don’t know how she comes up with that much poop from the two handfuls of rice she eats a day. Also, she is on a thirst strike. I haven’t seen her drink water at all. But I leave a small bowl of it where she can reach it all the time so maybe she is not so dumb not to drink if she is thirsty. She is uncomfortable so she bobbles around half the day trying to get comfortable, complaining. I can’t freaking wait to let her outside. Then we’ll see if she comes home or not. I’m going to make her a little nest on the porch so I don’t have to keep her inside nor have to worry about her when I am away, like at girls’ conference in two weeks.

So I had planned to spend the whole day on the couch, nursing my cold, but around noon I decided to go and saluer the Sous Prefet and family. Then I heard music coming from the school and remembered I had been invited to the “fermature” of the primary school. Now, when I was invited, he made a motion like he was locking a door, which led me to believe that we were literally just going to close the school and I was like, “why am I being invited to this?” No, it’s more like a closing CEREMONY complete with all the kids years 1-5, parents, friends, teachers and officials. I guess it’s a good thing I showed up because they had me on the list of officials to announce. So I had to give a little wave when the MC announced “la femme du Corps du la Paix, Oumou Diallo”. I was NOT properly dressed. I was wearing a dirty tank top and a pair of long shorts the tailor made for me and plastic flip flops. At least the shorts were made of Guinean fabric? Never make the mistake of thinking you can go somewhere and just hang out in the back and act casual. Cause it never happens.

So after a bunch of waiting and speeches and kids going to the microphone and doing recitations (this is how they learn here…they are made to memorize several series of phrases in French consisting of introducing themselves and their parents, saying where they go to school, etc, etc, etc), they line all the kids up and start to read off each kid’s name. Now, it’s not in random order or alphabetical order, it is in the exact order of how well they did on the three yearly compositions. So, kid with the highest average is read first and so on until the kid who did most poorly sheepishly walks by the table of officials including me, the CRD, the director of the Koranic school (I think), some dude from the Gendarmerie (cops), the district representative, the DPE (Prefectoral education director) and the DSPE (Sous Prefectoral education director). Then all the kids yell at kids who are still standing on the other side of the mango trees. Maybe those are the kids who REALLY didnt do well who don’t get their names read. I think of what this would be like in America. I think people would be outraged because in the US we put such an emphasis on self esteem and not hurting people’s feelings even if the plain truth is, you did the worst on your exams.

Parents and family friends give some of the kids money as they do their walk of fame (or shame) and each kid is expected to put 1 mille franc in a basket at the officials table. I ask the DSPE what the money in the basket is for. He says something about the teachers contract not being fulfilled and basically the money goes to pay for the taxis to take the teachers back to where they are from. Because lots of teachers don’t actually live where they teach and go home to their families for the vacance. Why they don’t just move to where their job is like we do in America is beyond me. They have to be here from October to July, seems worth it.

After observing this whole ceremony for awhile I decide I want to give money to the top girl in each class. Unfortunately I did not decide this until the last class, the 5th, was being announced. And then the top girl was, like, 13th. Of maybe 40 or so. She looked confused when I handed her 2 mille. Other kids who were getting money would only get 1 mille per donor so I wanted to show that the top girl was important so I doubled the cadeau. I asked the DSPE to show me the top girls from the other 4 classes at the end but it turned into a pagaille and Nene came up and said “allonsi” so my goodwill gesture of trying in a small way to encourage girls to stay in/do well in school was thwarted. Next year.

So if you ever wondered how integral rice is to life here, here’s a little slice: the kids learn a song that they sang multiple times during this ceremony and a bit of it goes like this: “When I’m hungry I eat the rice. When I’m thirsty I drink the water.” What else are they going to drink? There’s no milk (well, there would be if they’d milk the cows but they don’t do that), sodas are way too expensive and that’s pretty much all we got. Although occasionally a kid will earn 500 francs and go buy a Jolly Jus packet (kinda like a Kool-Aid packet) and flavor their water. I also like how they say THE rice. It’s like that time in training when Yarie said she was going to do the cooking that day and I said, “what are you going to make?” and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “the rice!!”

On the Sous Prefet changement front, Mr. Bangoura arrived back from Conakry yesterday evening. He told me that when he told the Prefet he was being changed, the Prefet was like, “no! You are my best Sous Prefet! I told them not to do that!” And then suggested a way Mr. Bangoura might keep his job. And if Mr. Bangoura WEREN’T such a decent Sous Prefet he might have gone that road but he didn’t, dude’s got principles. Unlike some others who are keeping their jobs. So they are moving to Conakry. Which is one of the better places they could move, for me, because it means I can see them when I am in Conakry for my quarterly visits. It’s better than, like, Boke. Where I never plan to be.

He also said the guy coming to replace him is a good guy but I don’t know how well he knows him and I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Bangoura to say nothing but nice things so the community gives the guy a fighting chance. Nene came by my house today and said that people have been coming over to the SPs house all day to cry. Including me.

C’est la vie.

Meet Meryl

2009-07-09T16:14:00.003Z

Today I became the proud owner of my first chicken. She’s white. I named her Meryl. I received her from my friend Nouhan, who gives me rides to and from the bigger city to the South for free in his SUV. When he was giving it to me (he bought it in my town today as we were having market day today), he said it was because I had said I wanted eggs last time he brought me home and then he told me to prepare the chicken well like an American would but I wasn’t sure if he meant the chicken or her eggs. I can’t kill a chicken and I got attached to her once I named her Meryl (it just happened, I wasn’t consciously trying to think up a name, hell I didn’t even know if I was going to keep her!), so I am gonna keep her for her eggs. Which apparently she will start to produce in my house after 3-4 weeks.

So here’s how you acclimate a pet chicken: tie their feet together so they can’t run off. Put them in your house for three days, you know, until they start to sympathize with their captors. Give them a handful of rice in the morning and a handful of rice at night, followed by water. After 3 days, put them outside. They will come back every night around 6pm. If she doesn’t come back it means she is shacking up with a rooster and you have to go find her. She sleeps in the house. The end.

Right now she is in an old USPS Flat Rate box which once contained awesome items from the States. She occasionally complains and flaps around but for the most part is quiet. She does not like Yogi. Yogi wants to sniff her all the time but as long as she is not running around squawking, he isn’t trying to bite her. Now, I need to create a house for Meryl outside. Not because I would mind having her in the house, but she probably won’t want to stay in the house with Yogi and I also leave once a month and she wouldn’t be able to get inside while I’m gone. So, outdoor house it is. Tomorrow I have to ask around about how exactly to construct such a thing (I know they exist, lots of people have them).

Today the Sous Prefet’s family put most of their belongings on a transport truck to be taken away, including five 50 kilo rice sacks of dried manioc. The SP still has not returned from Conakry but is supposed to get here tomorrow. I am really sad they will be leaving for good on Saturday. I took pictures of them today and gave them the presents I bought them in Labe, which went over really well.

Madame Bangoura is sad to be leaving but I can tell from what she says that she is starting to warm to the idea of moving to a big city like Conakry, where she can talk on the phone, watch TV, visit friends, go to soccer matches at the stadium, go to a half a dozen different markets, etc… She remarked how in our village she just sits on the porch and watches the day go by. I told her in English we call it “people watching”. I told her I would come and do it with her all day tomorrow since it will be my last chance.

Today I realized that she is one of only three women who speak French in my village. There’s her, Madame Fofana (whom I already wrote has left for Kindia and it is not known if she shall return) and Rama. Rama works for an NGO and isn’t in town more than half the month, usually less. The matron, Oumou, speaks a little French but it is very limited, where as I could converse freely with Madame Bangoura and Madame Fofana.

This lights a fire under my butt to start studying my Pular because who wants to talk to dudes all the time?

Anyway it feels like everybody’s leaving, many for good and some just for the vacance but basically what I’m left with is a rather dull summer. Guess that frees me up to study my Pular.

Bad Week

2009-07-07T16:14:00.001Z

So as I was coming back to site yesterday a dude at a barrage (the barrages are back, not sure exactly why, but they are, and at one, one of the guys actually asked me and John if we supported the CNDD, to which we refused to respond) told me that the Sous Prefet’s son (Mamadou) broke his arm in two places on Friday (he fell out of a tree) and the SP took him to Conakry. He also told me my dog died but then said he was just joking. I did not find it funny.

Then at John’s site his friends told me that all of the Sous Prefets are changing and that there will be a new one in my village and he will be from the Forest region and no one thinks he speaks Pular. Which makes a load of sense, n’est pas? I mean what effective governor speaks the language of their community? ::drips with sarcasm::

So I am sad because it means the SP and his family will be leaving my village. I mean, I realize that there are a lot of SPs in Guinea who are less than liked and I’m sure there are some that are corrupt or never do anything, but Mr. Bangoura is not one of those Sous Prefets. The entire community likes him, he does stuff, he is not corrupt, he is fair and a very nice guy. Everyone here is happy with him but regardless, he will be going away. It sucks big time for me.

I have also been told that Madame Fofana at the health center might not be coming back (which really sucks because I was going to use her as my counterpart to help distribute the mosquito nets I should be getting from Project Palu). Before I left for the fourth of July party in Labe she told me she was going to Kindia for a month, where her family lives, but that she would be coming back. Now I am being told that her volunteer contract with the health center is up and no one knows if she is coming back or not.

In fact the only good news I’ve gotten lately is that my friend Ousmane told me today that he told his family he wanted to do the 10th grade here instead of Conakry so that he can be my friend. He will still have to leave next summer to do 11th through Terminal somewhere else, but it will be nice to have him for the next school year when I want to do a lot of stuff at the school (pepiniere, vegetable garden, World Map Project, English classes, etc…).

Today he was here and hinting that he still needs some money for the taxi to Conakry where he is going to spend the vacance. He said he already had thirty mille but needs 50 for the taxi and really wants to get 60 so that he can eat. This seems reasonable. He wants to leave Thursday so I told him if he didn’t have to go to the fields tomorrow he could come work here and I would give him the rest of his transport money. It’s double the day rate for workers (which is 15 mille), but he is my friend and I am able to give it to him so I’m going to.

We are going to clear/cut back the weeds in my yard to discourage snakes, build a support system out of bamboo for my beans, line the other side of my path with mud bricks that are just sitting in my yard, make a platform out of mud bricks to put my buckets when it rains to collect water, repair a couple of holes in the fence where the goats are getting in, transplant my vegetable seedlings, plant the rest of my moringa seeds in sachets, attempt to deal with the erosion problem in my garden and maybe get a bunch of gliricidia leaves to mix into my dirt. Basically there is lots to do and tomorrow will be a busy day. He will earn his keep. He’s supposed to show up at 9am.

Today he also told me I got fat over the weekend, which means I must have done my fair share of eating and drinking. But hey, that’s what Fourth of July is for, n’est pas?

Epic Expedition

2009-06-29T16:36:00.000Z

Well today I did as planned and went with Alysun to his plantation. What I didn’t know was that it would turn into a five-hour mountain-traversing excursion.

So here’s how it happened. He showed up at my house an hour late (9am), par for the course in Guinea. I told him he was late and he said he had slept in (meaning he missed the 6am first prayer which my friend Ousmane claims he is ALWAYS up for). Then Yogi escaped. And ran straight to the Sous Prefet’s house, where I managed to catch him. The SP’s house is where he stayed for the two weeks I was in Conakry/Haute, and I have taken him there a few times but I still found it funny that he knew his way there and just went straight up to the kids to start playing. Mr. SP was not annoyed. I think he was actually amused. So I caught him.

And carried him all the way back to my house, enduring all the “is that your baby?” and “where is his cord?” comments the whole way, to which I just responded the noncommittal “mm-hmm”.

So we finally got on our way. We stopped by Alpha’s house to get a bag and then walked to the fields with Alpha and my friend the Secretaire (who took me to the reseau spot that one time but whom I haven’t seen a lot of since). The two of them eventually broke off at their fields and we kept going. I didn’t think it would be that much farther BUT IT WAS. So we get to the foot of the mountain, one of the beautiful, sheer-faced mountains that surround my village and we start going up it. Like, the boulder-y part. And I’m thinking, “where are we going? We are supposed to be going to a fruit tree plantation.” So we keep going. And going. And going. Into “vrai” (real) African jungle. And the whole time I’m thinking, “I’m just INVITING a snake to come bite me” (did I mention there was a snake at my house the other day that the nice dude who owns the boutique at the carrefour by my house came, saw it and said “tu as le raison” and killed it with my hoe? No? Well it happened.), as I push branches aside and step in places I can’t see. And nearly fall down embankments off the foot-wide path we are following. He is in front of me with a coup-coup (kind of like a machete with a hooked end), cutting branches and vines and clearing the way through what they call “le foret” but I call the African jungle, or bush.

After what seems like forever we finally get to a stream and he says, “here we are!” and I look around and there are about 20 banana trees and I am thinking this guy is kind of a lunatic to come all the way out here for 20 banana trees he could plant a million other places (he later tells me he cannot abandon this land which is not only the banana trees but also a literal mountainside of bush land his father [deceased] used to plant with rice, because it was claimed by “le vieux” [an old person] so it would be disrespectful not to continue. I asked why his father picked that land and he didn’t seem to know.) So we harvest some bananas and little piments (hot peppers) and he shows me a few orange and avocado tree seedlings and then he says we will descend the other way.

Which was much harder than the ascent. I slipped and fell at least 50 times in total and have all the scratches, bruises and broken pinky toe to prove it (Ousmane says my toe isn’t broken because if it was it would flop around and it just has a nasty bruise on it and hurts so apparently it’s not broken). I also got my clean clothes dirty and aggravated my infected toe (right next to my “broken” toe). Basically I was not prepared for this expedition into the bush, thinking this “plantation” was closer to the fields.

Anyway, after slipping and sliding down the mountain for over an hour (and heroically biting back the frustrated tears that DESPERATELY wanted to come), we get to more level ground and walk through some MORE fields where he points out all his different family members working their plots, explains he wants to plant more fruit trees here, eats some weird paste-looking dish I haven’t seen before (sans invitacion) at his older sister’s plot (whose kid cries and screams at the sight of my white skin), then takes me to his house to deposit the bananas and clean his shoes (at this point we have been voyaging for 4-4.5 hours). After this we FINALLY set off to go back to my house. I was relieved to get home.

I did get some green bananas out of it (which tomorrow I will turn into banana chips) and also got to see some absolutely brilliant (pissed I didn’t bring my camera) views of the mountains, my village and the fields (basically all the countryside surrounding my [what from up there looked pitifully tiny] village). I’ll have to go up there again but I’ll do it when I have a visitor and am prepared for hiking (hear that, dad???).

Thoroughly exhausted and relishing sleep I bid you goodnight.