Life in the Diarra Compound

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.