Laundry...and Cat As Delicacy

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…