Murphy's Law

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.