We had a session today on Gender and Development. This is such a big issue in Mali. Looks like I'm going to have to join a couple of these groups. Not to go in there with guns blazing but hopefully to help the understand the necessity for some things and the unnecessity for others.
Practice: The most common forms of female genital mutilation (FGM) or female genital cutting (FGC) throughout Mali are Type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and Type II (commonly referred to as excision), despite the fact that Malian women’s groups have been actively campaigning against this practice for over a decade. The more radical form, Type III (Commonly referred to as infibulations), is practiced in some of the southern areas of the country.
The incidence of these procedures among the women varies very little by age, religion or level of education. A recent survey found that three-quarters of the women between the ages of 15 and 49 favored continuing this practice.
Incidence: A United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Demographic and Health Survey of 9,704 women aged 15 to 49 in Mali was conducted in 1999 jointly by the Malian government and a private firm. The report put the percentage of women in this age range that had undergone one of these procedures at 93.7 percent.
The commission for the Promotion of Women estimates that as many as 96 percent of women and girls of women and girls living in rural areas and 92 percent of women and girls living in urban areas have been subjected to one of these procedures. Of the various forms, between 80 and 85 percent of the women affected have been subjected to Type I or Type II.
The practice crosses religious, ethnic, age and geographic lines. Only among the ethnic groups in the north of the country is the prevalence low. The Muslim Songhai, Tuareg and Moor populations, in general, do not practice any form. This accounts for the low prevalence in the northern regions of Tombouctou and Gao – 9.3 percent of the women. These areas are also the most sparsely populated.
The practice is found among more than 95 percent of the women and girls in the southern half of Mali, predominately populated by the Bambara, Soninke, Peul, Dogon and Senoufo ethnic groups. These groups include Muslims and Christians, as well as Animists. In Bamako and Koulikoro in Southern Mali, the rates reported are 95.3 percent and 99.3 percent respectively.
The actual practice varies according to ethnic group. In the past this practice was part of the marriage ceremony, the procedure performed on girls aged 14 or 15. The custom has changed and the age lowered. Some groups excise girls at an early age between birth and five years of age. It is common to subject girls as young as 20 days old to the procedure. The rationale is that wounds heal more effectively at a very young age. According to the Population Council, 37 percent of girls undergo the procedure before they reach school age.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Bathroom you say!!?? and other stuff...
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| The nyegen (bathroom) outside. |
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| WAALAA...the nyegen inside. |
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| With the cover on. |
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| Inside of shower. The shower head actually works...a little. |
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| My livng quarters at camp Tubaniso. |
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| The girls in my training center compound. |
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| How do you get your wood home? |
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| The market. |
I really need electricity and internet....phone home!!
February 17, 2011
It is 85 in my room and it feels so cool. I took my outdoor thermometer outside. In the direct sun it said 118. In the shade 105. And hot season hasn’t started yet.
I woke up a little teary eyed this morning. Language is going well. I feel OK…considering. I had a good couple of nights with my family. I miss my boys. I miss my brother…my sisters. I miss my mom and dad. Interesting that missing my mom and dad seems worse here since they’ve both been gone more than 20 years. Distance is a weird state of mind.
Sunday we got back to Tubaniso (the training center). I am very excited. Right now it is the only thing keeping me going. I can finally call the boys and skype with everyone and see familiar faces. I will hang in there and press on until then.
*I have to shave my legs…bad. I don’t usually shave at home, but I don’t wear skirts everyday either.
*A goat just took some cabbage out of the bowl with the food that will be our lunch in a little while. Apparently I’m the only one who saw…or who cares.
*I finished a book this week. That’s a big deal for me. I’m not a reader. I bought and brought a Kindle with 35 books downloaded on it. After we finish training I here there is a lot of down time. I guess there’s no time like the present to become a reader.
*My mood changes from hour to hour. Day to day. I’m hating it here right now. I asked my host mom if I could help her cook. She let me pour rice into the pot of boiling water. The neighbors watched and laughed and clapped like I was a moron. Now all they can say and they tell everyone that comes by that “Sitan is cooking”. Assholes… Half of the village is still talking about me having done my own laundry the other day by myself…2 days ago. How do they even know that??!! Surely they have something else to talk about then the stupid tubob (white person).
*My host sister just told me I was fat. Their politeness overwhelms.
February 20, 2011
This is what has been keeping me going this past week. We finally go back to the training center. Electricity, internet, a ceiling fan in my room.
I need to talk to the boys and my brother and sister…Loreen!! I have been really out of it. Weepy and lonely and of course it doesn’t help that my host family has been making me feel like an idiot because I can’t speak the language yet. I am setting small goals for myself right now. I can’t look at this as a 2 year stint. I will make myself crazy. My first goal was to get back to camp for this 3 days. My next goal will be to get through more homestay for 12 days. Then we will be going back to camp again. This time we will find out what our permanent site will be and we will be visiting it and staying a few days. I should be better able to communicate by then and hopefully start feeling better about this whole thing. Right now I’m hating life.
The 2 biggest things about our site visits will be 1) I will know now how I feel about where they are sending me and 2) how well I get along with my homologue. For every volunteer we have a Malian counterpart called a homologue. They will be our new BFF for the next 2 years. They will move to our village with us. They won’t live in the same compound but close. They may or may not speak English or French as well as bambara. Everything will kind of ride on how well we get along with or like this person. If I get someone like my host brother I’m going to have to have a big discussion with someone. I’m expecting homestay to be the worst part of my time with Peace Corps. After that, there will be some adjusting but I imagine it to be what I came here for.
February 22, 2011
I have been in Tubaniso for 2 days now. It was good to see everyone again. It’s weird how excited we were to see each other considering we really have known each other a few weeks. But we have been through so much. Of course it was hard to get internet connection on my computer because so many people were trying to get on at the same time. I stayed in the repertoire (dining room) until 3am. I Skyped my brother, my sister Gail, both the boys and Loreen. I was literally talking to one person or another for hours. It’s hard because the connections go in and out. So we’d have to keep calling back and reconnecting. But you gotta love modern technology. At our training in DC the head of Peace Corps was there. He was saying how much being a volunteer has changed since he was a volunteer 30 years ago. Back then you sent a letter to your friends and family. It took a month sometimes two to get there and then another month or more to get a letter back. In those letters they would try and set up a time to call with a date that could be as much as a month away. You couldn’t make it too soon. What if the letter didn’t get there in time. Crazy. I can’t even imagine doing this if I thought I couldn’t contact the boys and family and friends at least once every two weeks. I don’t just get to call. I saw my family yesterday!! I’m sitting in Africa they are sitting in the US and I got to see them and talk to them. It will be what gets me through these next two years.
I used my magicjack too. I called my sisters Karan and Lynn in New York. Again the connection is iffy, but I got to talk to them. And magicjack is only $20 a year. Not shabby. I’m feeling much better. It’s makes all the difference in the world to be able to stay in touch with your loved ones. The weirdest thing about how I’m feeling is I have been gone for only 3 weeks.
THREE WEEKS!!! It feels like so long. So much has happened. I’ve traveled for days. I’m living in Africa. I’ve been sick, I’ve been well, I’ve met hundreds of new people. I’ve learned a new language. I’ve eaten with chickens and goats and donkeys. Saw chickens and goats get slaughtered at the market. I almost got trampled by a herd of steer. I eat with my hands and take baths out of a bucket, by moonlight. Been touched, probed, propositioned. Gotten shots for everything from yellow fever to rabies. More has happened to me in these last 3 weeks than the last 3 years. If I left Africa today I would already not be the same person that left the states 3 weeks ago.
It is 85 in my room and it feels so cool. I took my outdoor thermometer outside. In the direct sun it said 118. In the shade 105. And hot season hasn’t started yet.
I woke up a little teary eyed this morning. Language is going well. I feel OK…considering. I had a good couple of nights with my family. I miss my boys. I miss my brother…my sisters. I miss my mom and dad. Interesting that missing my mom and dad seems worse here since they’ve both been gone more than 20 years. Distance is a weird state of mind.
Sunday we got back to Tubaniso (the training center). I am very excited. Right now it is the only thing keeping me going. I can finally call the boys and skype with everyone and see familiar faces. I will hang in there and press on until then.
*I have to shave my legs…bad. I don’t usually shave at home, but I don’t wear skirts everyday either.
*A goat just took some cabbage out of the bowl with the food that will be our lunch in a little while. Apparently I’m the only one who saw…or who cares.
*I finished a book this week. That’s a big deal for me. I’m not a reader. I bought and brought a Kindle with 35 books downloaded on it. After we finish training I here there is a lot of down time. I guess there’s no time like the present to become a reader.
*My mood changes from hour to hour. Day to day. I’m hating it here right now. I asked my host mom if I could help her cook. She let me pour rice into the pot of boiling water. The neighbors watched and laughed and clapped like I was a moron. Now all they can say and they tell everyone that comes by that “Sitan is cooking”. Assholes… Half of the village is still talking about me having done my own laundry the other day by myself…2 days ago. How do they even know that??!! Surely they have something else to talk about then the stupid tubob (white person).
*My host sister just told me I was fat. Their politeness overwhelms.
February 20, 2011
This is what has been keeping me going this past week. We finally go back to the training center. Electricity, internet, a ceiling fan in my room.
I need to talk to the boys and my brother and sister…Loreen!! I have been really out of it. Weepy and lonely and of course it doesn’t help that my host family has been making me feel like an idiot because I can’t speak the language yet. I am setting small goals for myself right now. I can’t look at this as a 2 year stint. I will make myself crazy. My first goal was to get back to camp for this 3 days. My next goal will be to get through more homestay for 12 days. Then we will be going back to camp again. This time we will find out what our permanent site will be and we will be visiting it and staying a few days. I should be better able to communicate by then and hopefully start feeling better about this whole thing. Right now I’m hating life.
The 2 biggest things about our site visits will be 1) I will know now how I feel about where they are sending me and 2) how well I get along with my homologue. For every volunteer we have a Malian counterpart called a homologue. They will be our new BFF for the next 2 years. They will move to our village with us. They won’t live in the same compound but close. They may or may not speak English or French as well as bambara. Everything will kind of ride on how well we get along with or like this person. If I get someone like my host brother I’m going to have to have a big discussion with someone. I’m expecting homestay to be the worst part of my time with Peace Corps. After that, there will be some adjusting but I imagine it to be what I came here for.
February 22, 2011
I have been in Tubaniso for 2 days now. It was good to see everyone again. It’s weird how excited we were to see each other considering we really have known each other a few weeks. But we have been through so much. Of course it was hard to get internet connection on my computer because so many people were trying to get on at the same time. I stayed in the repertoire (dining room) until 3am. I Skyped my brother, my sister Gail, both the boys and Loreen. I was literally talking to one person or another for hours. It’s hard because the connections go in and out. So we’d have to keep calling back and reconnecting. But you gotta love modern technology. At our training in DC the head of Peace Corps was there. He was saying how much being a volunteer has changed since he was a volunteer 30 years ago. Back then you sent a letter to your friends and family. It took a month sometimes two to get there and then another month or more to get a letter back. In those letters they would try and set up a time to call with a date that could be as much as a month away. You couldn’t make it too soon. What if the letter didn’t get there in time. Crazy. I can’t even imagine doing this if I thought I couldn’t contact the boys and family and friends at least once every two weeks. I don’t just get to call. I saw my family yesterday!! I’m sitting in Africa they are sitting in the US and I got to see them and talk to them. It will be what gets me through these next two years.
I used my magicjack too. I called my sisters Karan and Lynn in New York. Again the connection is iffy, but I got to talk to them. And magicjack is only $20 a year. Not shabby. I’m feeling much better. It’s makes all the difference in the world to be able to stay in touch with your loved ones. The weirdest thing about how I’m feeling is I have been gone for only 3 weeks.
THREE WEEKS!!! It feels like so long. So much has happened. I’ve traveled for days. I’m living in Africa. I’ve been sick, I’ve been well, I’ve met hundreds of new people. I’ve learned a new language. I’ve eaten with chickens and goats and donkeys. Saw chickens and goats get slaughtered at the market. I almost got trampled by a herd of steer. I eat with my hands and take baths out of a bucket, by moonlight. Been touched, probed, propositioned. Gotten shots for everything from yellow fever to rabies. More has happened to me in these last 3 weeks than the last 3 years. If I left Africa today I would already not be the same person that left the states 3 weeks ago.
First few days in Muntugula
February 7, 2011
Rue the day that I thought I’d be sitting in Africa with paper and pen at 2:40 in the afternoon waiting to go to Bambara language lessons. I so badly want to rest but I have to write this stuff down before I forget any of it. Words will never do it justice. Hopefully by the time I am ready to post this I will have some pictures to go with it.
We left Tubaniso at 8:30 for our homestay villages. Homestay is where (all 64 trainees) will stay for the next 9 weeks. It is here that we will learn Bambara (or should at least be an intermediate level by then) and immerse ourselves into the culture and learn as much as we can about Mali before moving to the site where we will spend the next 24 months.
The 64 are split into 6-10 people and put in different villages around Bamako. We drove for an hour. There were 10 of us in a Pathfinder with about 1500 pounds of luggage piled on top. Prone to motion sickness luckily no one fought me about a window seat. Not shotgun but as close as I could get. There is basically one road thru Bamako/Mali that goes from one end to the other. It is nicely paved but the driving is absolutely atrocious. No wonder we are not allowed to drive while we’re here. Everyone drives a scooter and the bush taxis can’t even get out of their own way no less get out of these scooters way…and they only go about 35 miles per hour. I decided I will never be able to travel while in Mali if these taxis are the only mode of transportation. I want to go to Dogon Country but from here it’s 20 hours. I don’t forsee it happening, but let’s see how I feel after I’ve been here for a while.
I had to stop writing for a while. Since I’ve been gone I put together my water filter system, went to the pump for water, ate lunch of rice, fish and tomatoey stewy stuff. I went to language class for 2 hours, yalla yalla’d (walked around) the village, stopping by the other PCVs homes to see where each one lived, met most of the villagers along the way, took a bucket bath and ate dinner. I did more in the past 6 hours than I would do on my busiest day in the states. Oh yeah all the while the mosque calling out for A La…prayer time…loud through an intercom system.
Muntugula – back to my story:
The road into the village is unpaved and very bumpy and ditchy and seemed much longer than it actually was. Then we turned into what I would have guessed to be a walking trail. The walls and huts so close that I could have put my hand out the window and touched…we reach the center of “town”. There is a building with the village elders, the dugutigi (village chief) and one representative from each family waiting for us. They did introductions and blessings around the room…as if we could understand any of it, we presented the chief with a gift of 10 kola nuts and went back outside where we were presented with our Malila names, grabbed our luggage and headed “home”.
Sitan Kulibali – my new name.
After we drop off my stuff we go walk over to the market so I can meet my host family. It consists of Gaussu who is my host brother, 20, Sitan, my name sake sister who is 15 and Burama who is my younger 12 year old brother. And of course my host mom Moussu Cura. I assumed there was no dad but I will learn further in the week he lives and works at their new compound and garden being built about a 25 minute walk. Apparently they have money. Everyone is smiling and excited and so happy to see me and yet as all these wonderful things are happening in the heat of the day I can’t help but wonder what the HELL I’m doing here. There hasn’t been one day that I have physically felt OK, I now know what they mean by “Africa hot” (and hot season hasn’t even started yet), I can’t communicate with anyone, there is trash everywhere and I’ve never been dirtier and smellier than I am right now…although I will learn over the next two weeks that I can be dirtier and smellier than I was that day. But this is what I signed up for, right?
February 9, 2011
After dinner and sitting around going thru all the greetings every time someone came into the compound I finally excused myself around 9:15. Apparently no one else is tired. I listen to noise, talking, laughing, scooters driving the road behind my room and calls for A La for another 2 hours on and off as I drift in and out of sleep. I woke at 5:30, to pee, but ignored it as long as I could. It’s such a hassle and no one likes a nyegen…even the good ones are awful. My sister got me another hot bucket of water for my morning bath. I ate bread with peanut butter in my room and off to school. Yesterday my brother walked me over to the school. Apparently he thinks I know the way on my own already.
After 4 hours of class we get a 2 hour lunch. That seems to be the norm for most as it is the hottest part of the day. I’m the only one in my compound that actually rests. But I can’t stay up and socialize another minute with everyone throwing words at me and I guess expecting me to already understand what they are saying. Saying it louder and slower each time I tell them I don’t understand what I’m saying. No Matter how slow or loud you say it I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE F%$K YOU’RE SAYING. It must be nap time. I’m feeling really irritable.
Random exerts:
*The water we run through our filters is from the pump in the center of town. The water we use for bathing, the salidaga (portable teapot bidet and sink), washing clothes and dishes is from the well in our courtyard. The well is a hole in a cement platform (about 6 inches above the ground) with a hatch door…that’s never closed. You stand over the hole drop a rubber bag tied with a rope down the hole, which is about 30 feet straight down until it hits the water. Once it’s full you have to hike it back up again. Which is not easy. It’s at least a gallon. But hand over hand, the young, the old, the in between hike up bag after back. I tried it myself. Not only is it dizzying standing over the hole, but the bag is not light. I don’t know how they do it, bag after bag, day after day. When I pulled up the bag everyone cheered like I was a rock star. I feel like I’m begin patronized but I’m not sure. Surely they don’t think I am totally helpless and this really was a big thing that I did. No one cheered my sister and she had just finished pulling up 10 bags.
*There is trash everywhere. Black plastic bags (similar to our grocery store bags) all over the place. They have no trash cans, trash system, landfills…something…anything. I know it’s a poor underdeveloped country but surely they can look around and see how wrong this is. The children are playing in trash, people are walking in trash…the animals are eating trash. Surely someone besides me has thought “Wouldn’t it be a lot more pleasant if we picked ONE spot for everyone to put their trash?” They have to walk to the pumps to get water, why not walk to the heap to dump trash?
*My host brother, Gaussu is nice and has been very helpful. But just for one minute that I’m home I would appreciate if he would stop snapping his fingers in my face pointing to stuff and telling me what it is. Then forcing me to repeat it over and over again. I’m trying to process what’s already in my head that we learned in school today.
*I have a cell phone!! There are two cell phone carriers in Mali. Orange (with a French accent) and Mali Tel. Between the two there is coverage over the whole country. Since we don’t know where we will be set up permanently yet, we all got a phone and a phone number and sim card from each carrier. This way we are covered no matter where we are. When I got to site I went to the butiki to buy some Mali Tel numbers since this is the carrier that works the area we were in. When I got back to my house I realized I only bought the Orange sim card. I was going to call the boys tonight. This makes me sad.
2 /9/11 still - Bitching up a storm
This is a very long day. Schol is OK. Of course it doesn’t help that we are outside in the sun. There is a hangar over us, but…it’s 100 degrees for goodness sake. We pushed thru 4 hours of class and then broke for lunch. I ate good. Couscous with peanut sauce and some kind of meat. Maybe goat. A small banana and piece of orange. My family really does take care of me well. Good food, plenty of water for bathing…twice a day they hook me up. No one would believe the way I bathe. Squatting down…naked…next to a bucket. Pouring water, sudsing, pouring water. In an outdoor, no roof on it nyegen. There is a wall around it but still. I used to shower with my pajamas on. No one gets hurt or goes blind. Now…outside…naked.
One of the other PCTs came by to get me on the way to school. She was pretty upset. She was in her room resting when her host dad told her to come out. Some of his friends were there and they just started throwing words out and questions and waiting for her to respond and laughing. Sometimes my family laughs but I know, I think, they are laughing with me. She not feeling it. She was obviously upset. If you have never been in a situation where the whole world is speaking one language and you can’t understand, answer, communicate, you can’t even begin to imagine what being here is like. Again, I know this is what we signed up for…we are tired, hot and filled with too much information. Sometimes you feel you could bust. And the whole village has been instructed to talk to us and chat us up. It’s relentless.
I keep trying to remember the bigger goal. How great it is going to be when I’m helping pregnant moms and babies. Going to schools to teach and not learn. In my own home cooking when I want and being able to sit outside without someone snapping and pointing. Alas, we have to go thru this to get to that. I have to go to dinner and then I will go to my room right after. Instead of pissing and moaning on paper, maybe I’ll bust out my Kindle and read. I downloaded a funny book for just such an occasion.
February 10, 2011
5:30am wake up call for prayer. They may as well have the intercom in my room. I guess that’s the point. Loud enough for everyone to hear and start the day honoring their god.
I think this whole experience is taking its toll on everyone. We’re cranky, we’re tired of our families parading us around like a leashed animals, we feel stupid and we’re just plain dirty. Although they say this 9 weeks is the worst, the one helpful thing we have is each other. Once we move in to our sites we will really be alone. The things we will be able to bring with us there that we don’t have now…language (the ability to communicate) and culture.
In the meantime, it feels like we’ve been here a month and it’s only been 5 days. One girl in my group is sure she won’t make it. She says it is not what she signed up for. I’m not sure what I signed up for right about now myself. I told them we need to cut ourselves some slack. 10 days ago we were in our comfy homes with our families, children and pets. We were hanging out with are friends, raiding the fridge when the mood suited, drink cold water and diet Dr. Pepper (what I’d do for a soda right now). Ever single person we passed in the street understood what we were saying and we understood them. We know and are retaining more than we think we are. When I took French I had a 2 hour class twice a week. We are in Bambara class 6 hours a day, 6 days a week. Tough times girls, tough times.
I just finished my evening bucket bath. The one in the morning is a nice way to wake up feeling refreshed and clean. But the evening bath, right before dinner, I can’t even explain. You can feel the grit and dirt on you AND the stink. I never thought I’d appreciate a warm bucket of parasitic water in my life as I do right now.
Today I learned question words and connecting words/phrases. Who, what, when, why, where, and then, first, after, because, maybe…and we put some sentences together. We walked to the market and walked up to the sellers asking what’s this and what’s that and how do you say. Going through the whole greeting ritual with everyone we passed.
How many of you can say you ate out of the same bowl with chickens and goats today for luch. On the way back to school I had to stop for about 15 cows and steers to cross the road, walked to the pump for water and dodged a donkey cart. My day is full. AAAAAA LLLLLLLAAAAAA!!
During the culture session of the day we learned about “joking cousins”. Very interesting theory. There aren’t that many last names in Mali. Everyone a decendent of or current relative of everyone else. When you meet someone with the same last name as you or a member of your family right away you have this connection. You can say anything and joke with them and everyone laughs. They say things like you eat beans (we all know what that leads to…it’s nice to know farting is funny no matter what part of the world you’re in. Then you say your family name is the best and you are a donkey or pig and then make the animal noise. Since the inception of this, what appears to be, this hilarious tradition joking cousins continues across families and names. And since you are related and these “cousins” you can never fight. In Mali they believe this is why their country has never had any wars and they have always been at peace. Because they joke with each other. I walked around town today with my brother everyone asking my last name and when I would tell them it was Kulibali they would say I eat beans and make heehaw noises at me. They thought it was hilarious when I did it right back to them. To them this is the most fun you can have in a day. And apparently it never gets old. But again, if this is what has kept them from warring all these years, and they joke and no ones feelings ever gets hurt then praise be the “joking cousin.
*When we sit and eat I sit at a small setting (low bench around knee height and beach chairs) with my host brother (the eldest, 20). The rest of the family and any friends that happen to be around at lunch or dinner time sit and eat out of a separate huge bowl. In the bowl is usually rice and whatever stewy stuff for the day spooned over the top. Using only the right hand you scoop up some food and with your hand coming up from the bottom you slop it into your mouth shoving everything including your fingers into your mouth. Then every few bites my host brother licks his hand from the wrist to the finger tips and then, you got it, sticks that hand right back in the bowl. My host brother loves to make sure I got enough fish or potatoes or carrots so he will use that hand pick stuff up out of the bowl and hand it to me to eat. Double dipping takes on a whole new meaning. If I was in the US I would never eat another bite of food again. But here it’s all OK. I do make sure my brother washes his hands really good before we eat…of course that clean is shot to hell once he sticks that hand full on into his mouth.
*For those of you who know me best you know of my utter disgust of the site of lizards and frogs. Well they are plentiful here. I was attached by frogs in 4 different incidences the first night. Here in Muntugula there aren’t any frogs, that I’ve seen so far, but there are lizards and they are huge. The size of kamato dragons. As we know they love the hot cement. They love hanging out in the nyegen (bathroom). Thankfully they are quicker than I am. And they don’t come out at night. I was excited to hear Malians are afraid of frogs. So I fit right in.
Our class met over at the clinic today along with the Health Ed people from Jamina (a village down the street about 20 minutes). It was the first of the technical training sessions. Mostly we checked out the clinic compound, the different buildings and got to ask what we thought was a doctor questions. Apparently there are 2 health technicians in our village but no real doctor to speak of. We asked questions about family planning, or lack thereof, and diseases that are prelevant for the area. The problems of course for the clinics are the obvious, lack of staff, lack of supplies, no electricity for refrigeration, lighting or hot water…which all stems from lack of money. They have solar panels hooked to a water tank for hot water but those broke a long time ago. The mayor was supposed to get them a new solar panel for electricity and for the fridge to store vaccines but that never actually happened. They use a kerosene fridge. You can imagine the nightmare that is to make sure that stays running and cold. We saw the delivery room, recovery room, the offices for shots and to pay. In the recovery room (maternity ward if you will) there was someone who had just delivered the night before. She was resting on the floor while her mother was holding the baby on the bed. We see children all the time with horrible protruding belly buttons. I was explaining to the others in my group how the belly button is clipped after birth and it is left off until the remaining part of the cord falls off leaving a nice neat belly button. After holding this newborn baby I now know why all the kids have this belly button issue. They obviously cut and that’s it. This babies belly button was a terrible mess waiting to happen.
The delivery room is not to be described. I have nothing to say.
We talked about family planning, not for the lack of trying, but it’s just not the nature of the beast. More children make more workers make more money. The men don’t want their women on birth control. The more babies the stronger the man, right? “Look what I can do.” So they are trying to instill “birth spacing”. So in 8 years have 4 babies instead of 8. I’m not so sure that’s catching on.
Malaria of course is their biggest threat. Their course of action is to treat it when they get it opposed to taking preventative profalaxis. The pills taken weekly are about 200 francs or 40 cents per week…per person. That doesn’t sound like much but when you have 8 people in your family and you only make $1 per day it’s the difference between eating…every night…or not.
I was surprised to learn they have a very low percentage of HIV/Aids. Only 1.5%. STD’s aren’t too bad either. They have high incidences of shistos which is a parasite you get after swimming in contaminated water…the Niger River. Especially after rainy season.
*Hot season is coming. March thru mid-May the temperatures during the day should be around 110 to 120.
*Donkeys SCREAM!! For no apparent reason. They do it a lot during the night. It’ll be nice and quiet, I’m sleeping and all of a sudden a donkey will scream. “When will the donkeys stop screaming Clarice?”
School pictures:
Rue the day that I thought I’d be sitting in Africa with paper and pen at 2:40 in the afternoon waiting to go to Bambara language lessons. I so badly want to rest but I have to write this stuff down before I forget any of it. Words will never do it justice. Hopefully by the time I am ready to post this I will have some pictures to go with it.
We left Tubaniso at 8:30 for our homestay villages. Homestay is where (all 64 trainees) will stay for the next 9 weeks. It is here that we will learn Bambara (or should at least be an intermediate level by then) and immerse ourselves into the culture and learn as much as we can about Mali before moving to the site where we will spend the next 24 months.
The 64 are split into 6-10 people and put in different villages around Bamako. We drove for an hour. There were 10 of us in a Pathfinder with about 1500 pounds of luggage piled on top. Prone to motion sickness luckily no one fought me about a window seat. Not shotgun but as close as I could get. There is basically one road thru Bamako/Mali that goes from one end to the other. It is nicely paved but the driving is absolutely atrocious. No wonder we are not allowed to drive while we’re here. Everyone drives a scooter and the bush taxis can’t even get out of their own way no less get out of these scooters way…and they only go about 35 miles per hour. I decided I will never be able to travel while in Mali if these taxis are the only mode of transportation. I want to go to Dogon Country but from here it’s 20 hours. I don’t forsee it happening, but let’s see how I feel after I’ve been here for a while.
I had to stop writing for a while. Since I’ve been gone I put together my water filter system, went to the pump for water, ate lunch of rice, fish and tomatoey stewy stuff. I went to language class for 2 hours, yalla yalla’d (walked around) the village, stopping by the other PCVs homes to see where each one lived, met most of the villagers along the way, took a bucket bath and ate dinner. I did more in the past 6 hours than I would do on my busiest day in the states. Oh yeah all the while the mosque calling out for A La…prayer time…loud through an intercom system.
Muntugula – back to my story:
The road into the village is unpaved and very bumpy and ditchy and seemed much longer than it actually was. Then we turned into what I would have guessed to be a walking trail. The walls and huts so close that I could have put my hand out the window and touched…we reach the center of “town”. There is a building with the village elders, the dugutigi (village chief) and one representative from each family waiting for us. They did introductions and blessings around the room…as if we could understand any of it, we presented the chief with a gift of 10 kola nuts and went back outside where we were presented with our Malila names, grabbed our luggage and headed “home”.
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| Home sweet home. |
Sitan Kulibali – my new name.
After we drop off my stuff we go walk over to the market so I can meet my host family. It consists of Gaussu who is my host brother, 20, Sitan, my name sake sister who is 15 and Burama who is my younger 12 year old brother. And of course my host mom Moussu Cura. I assumed there was no dad but I will learn further in the week he lives and works at their new compound and garden being built about a 25 minute walk. Apparently they have money. Everyone is smiling and excited and so happy to see me and yet as all these wonderful things are happening in the heat of the day I can’t help but wonder what the HELL I’m doing here. There hasn’t been one day that I have physically felt OK, I now know what they mean by “Africa hot” (and hot season hasn’t even started yet), I can’t communicate with anyone, there is trash everywhere and I’ve never been dirtier and smellier than I am right now…although I will learn over the next two weeks that I can be dirtier and smellier than I was that day. But this is what I signed up for, right?
February 9, 2011
After dinner and sitting around going thru all the greetings every time someone came into the compound I finally excused myself around 9:15. Apparently no one else is tired. I listen to noise, talking, laughing, scooters driving the road behind my room and calls for A La for another 2 hours on and off as I drift in and out of sleep. I woke at 5:30, to pee, but ignored it as long as I could. It’s such a hassle and no one likes a nyegen…even the good ones are awful. My sister got me another hot bucket of water for my morning bath. I ate bread with peanut butter in my room and off to school. Yesterday my brother walked me over to the school. Apparently he thinks I know the way on my own already.
After 4 hours of class we get a 2 hour lunch. That seems to be the norm for most as it is the hottest part of the day. I’m the only one in my compound that actually rests. But I can’t stay up and socialize another minute with everyone throwing words at me and I guess expecting me to already understand what they are saying. Saying it louder and slower each time I tell them I don’t understand what I’m saying. No Matter how slow or loud you say it I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE F%$K YOU’RE SAYING. It must be nap time. I’m feeling really irritable.
Random exerts:
*The water we run through our filters is from the pump in the center of town. The water we use for bathing, the salidaga (portable teapot bidet and sink), washing clothes and dishes is from the well in our courtyard. The well is a hole in a cement platform (about 6 inches above the ground) with a hatch door…that’s never closed. You stand over the hole drop a rubber bag tied with a rope down the hole, which is about 30 feet straight down until it hits the water. Once it’s full you have to hike it back up again. Which is not easy. It’s at least a gallon. But hand over hand, the young, the old, the in between hike up bag after back. I tried it myself. Not only is it dizzying standing over the hole, but the bag is not light. I don’t know how they do it, bag after bag, day after day. When I pulled up the bag everyone cheered like I was a rock star. I feel like I’m begin patronized but I’m not sure. Surely they don’t think I am totally helpless and this really was a big thing that I did. No one cheered my sister and she had just finished pulling up 10 bags.
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| My host sister pulling bags of water. |
*There is trash everywhere. Black plastic bags (similar to our grocery store bags) all over the place. They have no trash cans, trash system, landfills…something…anything. I know it’s a poor underdeveloped country but surely they can look around and see how wrong this is. The children are playing in trash, people are walking in trash…the animals are eating trash. Surely someone besides me has thought “Wouldn’t it be a lot more pleasant if we picked ONE spot for everyone to put their trash?” They have to walk to the pumps to get water, why not walk to the heap to dump trash?
*My host brother, Gaussu is nice and has been very helpful. But just for one minute that I’m home I would appreciate if he would stop snapping his fingers in my face pointing to stuff and telling me what it is. Then forcing me to repeat it over and over again. I’m trying to process what’s already in my head that we learned in school today.
*I have a cell phone!! There are two cell phone carriers in Mali. Orange (with a French accent) and Mali Tel. Between the two there is coverage over the whole country. Since we don’t know where we will be set up permanently yet, we all got a phone and a phone number and sim card from each carrier. This way we are covered no matter where we are. When I got to site I went to the butiki to buy some Mali Tel numbers since this is the carrier that works the area we were in. When I got back to my house I realized I only bought the Orange sim card. I was going to call the boys tonight. This makes me sad.
2 /9/11 still - Bitching up a storm
This is a very long day. Schol is OK. Of course it doesn’t help that we are outside in the sun. There is a hangar over us, but…it’s 100 degrees for goodness sake. We pushed thru 4 hours of class and then broke for lunch. I ate good. Couscous with peanut sauce and some kind of meat. Maybe goat. A small banana and piece of orange. My family really does take care of me well. Good food, plenty of water for bathing…twice a day they hook me up. No one would believe the way I bathe. Squatting down…naked…next to a bucket. Pouring water, sudsing, pouring water. In an outdoor, no roof on it nyegen. There is a wall around it but still. I used to shower with my pajamas on. No one gets hurt or goes blind. Now…outside…naked.
One of the other PCTs came by to get me on the way to school. She was pretty upset. She was in her room resting when her host dad told her to come out. Some of his friends were there and they just started throwing words out and questions and waiting for her to respond and laughing. Sometimes my family laughs but I know, I think, they are laughing with me. She not feeling it. She was obviously upset. If you have never been in a situation where the whole world is speaking one language and you can’t understand, answer, communicate, you can’t even begin to imagine what being here is like. Again, I know this is what we signed up for…we are tired, hot and filled with too much information. Sometimes you feel you could bust. And the whole village has been instructed to talk to us and chat us up. It’s relentless.
I keep trying to remember the bigger goal. How great it is going to be when I’m helping pregnant moms and babies. Going to schools to teach and not learn. In my own home cooking when I want and being able to sit outside without someone snapping and pointing. Alas, we have to go thru this to get to that. I have to go to dinner and then I will go to my room right after. Instead of pissing and moaning on paper, maybe I’ll bust out my Kindle and read. I downloaded a funny book for just such an occasion.
February 10, 2011
5:30am wake up call for prayer. They may as well have the intercom in my room. I guess that’s the point. Loud enough for everyone to hear and start the day honoring their god.
I think this whole experience is taking its toll on everyone. We’re cranky, we’re tired of our families parading us around like a leashed animals, we feel stupid and we’re just plain dirty. Although they say this 9 weeks is the worst, the one helpful thing we have is each other. Once we move in to our sites we will really be alone. The things we will be able to bring with us there that we don’t have now…language (the ability to communicate) and culture.
In the meantime, it feels like we’ve been here a month and it’s only been 5 days. One girl in my group is sure she won’t make it. She says it is not what she signed up for. I’m not sure what I signed up for right about now myself. I told them we need to cut ourselves some slack. 10 days ago we were in our comfy homes with our families, children and pets. We were hanging out with are friends, raiding the fridge when the mood suited, drink cold water and diet Dr. Pepper (what I’d do for a soda right now). Ever single person we passed in the street understood what we were saying and we understood them. We know and are retaining more than we think we are. When I took French I had a 2 hour class twice a week. We are in Bambara class 6 hours a day, 6 days a week. Tough times girls, tough times.
I just finished my evening bucket bath. The one in the morning is a nice way to wake up feeling refreshed and clean. But the evening bath, right before dinner, I can’t even explain. You can feel the grit and dirt on you AND the stink. I never thought I’d appreciate a warm bucket of parasitic water in my life as I do right now.
Today I learned question words and connecting words/phrases. Who, what, when, why, where, and then, first, after, because, maybe…and we put some sentences together. We walked to the market and walked up to the sellers asking what’s this and what’s that and how do you say. Going through the whole greeting ritual with everyone we passed.
How many of you can say you ate out of the same bowl with chickens and goats today for luch. On the way back to school I had to stop for about 15 cows and steers to cross the road, walked to the pump for water and dodged a donkey cart. My day is full. AAAAAA LLLLLLLAAAAAA!!
During the culture session of the day we learned about “joking cousins”. Very interesting theory. There aren’t that many last names in Mali. Everyone a decendent of or current relative of everyone else. When you meet someone with the same last name as you or a member of your family right away you have this connection. You can say anything and joke with them and everyone laughs. They say things like you eat beans (we all know what that leads to…it’s nice to know farting is funny no matter what part of the world you’re in. Then you say your family name is the best and you are a donkey or pig and then make the animal noise. Since the inception of this, what appears to be, this hilarious tradition joking cousins continues across families and names. And since you are related and these “cousins” you can never fight. In Mali they believe this is why their country has never had any wars and they have always been at peace. Because they joke with each other. I walked around town today with my brother everyone asking my last name and when I would tell them it was Kulibali they would say I eat beans and make heehaw noises at me. They thought it was hilarious when I did it right back to them. To them this is the most fun you can have in a day. And apparently it never gets old. But again, if this is what has kept them from warring all these years, and they joke and no ones feelings ever gets hurt then praise be the “joking cousin.
*When we sit and eat I sit at a small setting (low bench around knee height and beach chairs) with my host brother (the eldest, 20). The rest of the family and any friends that happen to be around at lunch or dinner time sit and eat out of a separate huge bowl. In the bowl is usually rice and whatever stewy stuff for the day spooned over the top. Using only the right hand you scoop up some food and with your hand coming up from the bottom you slop it into your mouth shoving everything including your fingers into your mouth. Then every few bites my host brother licks his hand from the wrist to the finger tips and then, you got it, sticks that hand right back in the bowl. My host brother loves to make sure I got enough fish or potatoes or carrots so he will use that hand pick stuff up out of the bowl and hand it to me to eat. Double dipping takes on a whole new meaning. If I was in the US I would never eat another bite of food again. But here it’s all OK. I do make sure my brother washes his hands really good before we eat…of course that clean is shot to hell once he sticks that hand full on into his mouth.
*For those of you who know me best you know of my utter disgust of the site of lizards and frogs. Well they are plentiful here. I was attached by frogs in 4 different incidences the first night. Here in Muntugula there aren’t any frogs, that I’ve seen so far, but there are lizards and they are huge. The size of kamato dragons. As we know they love the hot cement. They love hanging out in the nyegen (bathroom). Thankfully they are quicker than I am. And they don’t come out at night. I was excited to hear Malians are afraid of frogs. So I fit right in.
Our class met over at the clinic today along with the Health Ed people from Jamina (a village down the street about 20 minutes). It was the first of the technical training sessions. Mostly we checked out the clinic compound, the different buildings and got to ask what we thought was a doctor questions. Apparently there are 2 health technicians in our village but no real doctor to speak of. We asked questions about family planning, or lack thereof, and diseases that are prelevant for the area. The problems of course for the clinics are the obvious, lack of staff, lack of supplies, no electricity for refrigeration, lighting or hot water…which all stems from lack of money. They have solar panels hooked to a water tank for hot water but those broke a long time ago. The mayor was supposed to get them a new solar panel for electricity and for the fridge to store vaccines but that never actually happened. They use a kerosene fridge. You can imagine the nightmare that is to make sure that stays running and cold. We saw the delivery room, recovery room, the offices for shots and to pay. In the recovery room (maternity ward if you will) there was someone who had just delivered the night before. She was resting on the floor while her mother was holding the baby on the bed. We see children all the time with horrible protruding belly buttons. I was explaining to the others in my group how the belly button is clipped after birth and it is left off until the remaining part of the cord falls off leaving a nice neat belly button. After holding this newborn baby I now know why all the kids have this belly button issue. They obviously cut and that’s it. This babies belly button was a terrible mess waiting to happen.
The delivery room is not to be described. I have nothing to say.
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| Delivery room...need I say more. |
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| New baby that was just born. I held her while mom rested comfortably on the floor. |
We talked about family planning, not for the lack of trying, but it’s just not the nature of the beast. More children make more workers make more money. The men don’t want their women on birth control. The more babies the stronger the man, right? “Look what I can do.” So they are trying to instill “birth spacing”. So in 8 years have 4 babies instead of 8. I’m not so sure that’s catching on.
Malaria of course is their biggest threat. Their course of action is to treat it when they get it opposed to taking preventative profalaxis. The pills taken weekly are about 200 francs or 40 cents per week…per person. That doesn’t sound like much but when you have 8 people in your family and you only make $1 per day it’s the difference between eating…every night…or not.
I was surprised to learn they have a very low percentage of HIV/Aids. Only 1.5%. STD’s aren’t too bad either. They have high incidences of shistos which is a parasite you get after swimming in contaminated water…the Niger River. Especially after rainy season.
*Hot season is coming. March thru mid-May the temperatures during the day should be around 110 to 120.
*Donkeys SCREAM!! For no apparent reason. They do it a lot during the night. It’ll be nice and quiet, I’m sleeping and all of a sudden a donkey will scream. “When will the donkeys stop screaming Clarice?”
School pictures:
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| Abu, teaching us Bambara. |
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| Class. |
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| Walking home for lunch. |
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| Studying under the tree after school. |
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| What the hell is going on!? |
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| Abu pulling tea at lunchtime. |
Monday, February 7, 2011
Mountougoula
Today we received our homestay village sites. I will be in a village called Mountougoula with 7 other trainees. We will be learning bambara and immersing into the culture. We will stay there for the next 9 weeks coming into the training center every 10 days or so. While I'm there I won't have electricity or internet. So I will try to keep notes and take pictures to update when I get back.
February 7, 2011 - Random thought
Malians think we’re dirty. They say we only wash our feet once a day when we bathe. They wash their feet at least 3 times a day at the well.
When they go to the bathroom they hold a salidaga (ass washing teapot) in their right hand and wipe with their left ONLY. When they eat they NEVER use their left hand. NEVER, NEVER put your left hand in the bowl. Even if you’re left handed. We use our strong/writing hand for everything…writing, wiping, picking our noses, licking and then eating. This horrifies them. Now that it’s been bought to my attention it horrifies me a bit too.
Today I peed directly into the hole…twice. No run off on the floor and no splashing on my feet. Now you know why they wash their feet throughout the day. It’s unavoidable. Pee splashes.
After being so sick and shitty for the past few days I don’t think I want to be in as a remote an area as I had first thought and told them in my interview. I still want a small village but I don’t want to have to rely on riding my bike 9 miles just to get to the main road to meet the PC shuttle or bus to get out of town. Who was I kidding. I’m gonna drop dead. Hot season is coming. It will be a 110 to 120 out soon. Screw that. Where are the air conditioned huts?
I got a cell phone. Anyone cal call me and no matter how far out I am I should have service. It doesn’t cost me anything to receive calls, but it will cost you an arm and a leg I’m sure. So I don’t recommend it unless it’s an emergency.
I wish I had a piece of beef jerky or some fruit. There is no refrigerator to raid at night when the mood suits me.
Mango season is coming up. Mangos the size of your head from what I hear.
When they go to the bathroom they hold a salidaga (ass washing teapot) in their right hand and wipe with their left ONLY. When they eat they NEVER use their left hand. NEVER, NEVER put your left hand in the bowl. Even if you’re left handed. We use our strong/writing hand for everything…writing, wiping, picking our noses, licking and then eating. This horrifies them. Now that it’s been bought to my attention it horrifies me a bit too.
Today I peed directly into the hole…twice. No run off on the floor and no splashing on my feet. Now you know why they wash their feet throughout the day. It’s unavoidable. Pee splashes.
After being so sick and shitty for the past few days I don’t think I want to be in as a remote an area as I had first thought and told them in my interview. I still want a small village but I don’t want to have to rely on riding my bike 9 miles just to get to the main road to meet the PC shuttle or bus to get out of town. Who was I kidding. I’m gonna drop dead. Hot season is coming. It will be a 110 to 120 out soon. Screw that. Where are the air conditioned huts?
I got a cell phone. Anyone cal call me and no matter how far out I am I should have service. It doesn’t cost me anything to receive calls, but it will cost you an arm and a leg I’m sure. So I don’t recommend it unless it’s an emergency.
I wish I had a piece of beef jerky or some fruit. There is no refrigerator to raid at night when the mood suits me.
Mango season is coming up. Mangos the size of your head from what I hear.
February 4, 2011
This is the first minute I’ve been well enough to write anything. We have to take a malaria pill once a week for the entire time we are here. It is potent and it is time release so just once a week. Most people when they visit countries that you need malaria pills you start taking them 2 - 4 weeks before travel. I kept wondering why we didn’t get a prescription or anything. I assumed we would take the first one in DC. Alas, this did not happen. On the 3rd we took our first one. Because now we are already here and would could have been bit getting off the plane and already have Malaria we need to up the dosage to build up the levels of Mefloquine (sp?? I have the paper with the correct spelling but I’m not well enough to get up right now) in our systems. So now we are to take a pill once a day for 3 days. I don’t know why this doesn’t sound OK to me. So the side effects are shaking, anxiety, nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, headaches, irritability, lightheadedness, dizziness…to name a few and all of the ones I have had since day one…minus the vomiting. Those who know me know how much I hate to vomit, or even say the word, or hear the sounds of vomiting. So that wasn’t an option. This being the 4th day I have had all these symptoms. Today, even though we didn’t have to take a pill today and don’t have to take one again until next Sunday was my worst day yet. The day of the culture festival.
I woke up sick to my stomach and tried to eat something. My stomach was upset, my mouth was dry, I was shaking and anxious. Could put the food, the nice dry bread with peanut butter and jelly, in my mouth but could not swallow. I went into the repertoire and apparently looked pretty scary as everyone was asking if I was alright. I did not answer…I cried, and cried and cried. So a volunteer trainer took me so dizzy barely able to walk to the infirmary. I laid down for a while and they gave me a packet of Gatorade to mix in my water. I felt a little better so I went to the training that was all about us leaving for homestay (the village and family we will live with for the next 9 weeks). I stood as long as I could and then had to lay down, back up when I was better…and then back down. It was like the worst hangover in the world. And this has been three days. I’m a little pissed at PC and this could be my irritability talking, but WHY for the love of god did we not start these pills at home? What makes them think it is OK to give these pills to us every day for three days when it is a once a week pill? As it turns out, although I seem to have been the worst affected, I am not the only one. Some didn’t get their side effects until today. They said they felt dizzy and shaky but nothing they couldn’t deal with. Then bam…today they hit a brick wall. But nothing like what I had . At one point I was sitting in the dining area shaking and nauseous crying like a baby. I was trying to unplug my phone and couldn’t do it. It was horrible. Although I still may have some slight side effects over the next couple of week until my body builds up a tolerance this should never happen again…especially since I’m not dumb enough to take the three pills like that in a row again…EVER.
So I missed all the good material at the culture fair to have a pan~a made. So I bought something OK and had one made anyone and then bought a beautiful purple material kind of shiny for my dress for the swearing in. Supposedly it’s quite the party and everyone gets dressed up. There were young men on sewing machines making outfits while you waited. But there is a tailor in every village and they will do a more detailed job with embroidery around the neck and bottom and sleeves. I can get a full length dress or a top and a matching pan~a. Have it made to fit for like $5. So I’m going to wait. It’s gonna be great. There was dancing and singing. I even felt good enough to dance some. The drumming is amazing and they are just so happy and really know how to party. No alcohol involved.
Apparently the fact that I felt better was a tease. Within an hour I was shaking and nauseous and dizzy again. I hadn’t eaten all day due to lack of appetite, but I really felt like I needed to. And of course they had some American type food. Beef kabobs, French fries, some of the usually stewy stuff and some break type substance…of course. I believe they said it was fru fru. So sans the french fries I ate one kabob, a bready thing and a little stewy stuff. LOL!! That sounds so ridiculous but definitely describes what we eat. I came back to my hut and took a warm bucket bath, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, put on my pjs, took and Excederin PM and had nice thoughts of a good night sleep. After laying on my bed for about 40 minutes I figured it I could sit up without being nauseous I would write my blog into a word document so when I get internet in the morning and if I’m feeling better hopefully I can find time to post. Since tomorrow is our last full day here before leaving for homestay site for 10 days, it’s now or never…or at least 10 days.
Tomorrow we are going to find out where our homestay site is. All of the villages will be dispersed to are within an hour of where we are now. There will be 5-6 volunteers at each site. So even though we won’t be together anymore, we won’t be alone either. I assume they will split us up by language first. About 80 percent of us that are here will be learning Bambara. But there are other minority languages spoken here. Malinki, pul, fufu (or something like that) and a couple of others. Those of us that tested advanced French will be taught to speak one of the minority languages. Since most of the men speak their local language as well as French the chosen volunteers will still be able to communicate well within their village either way. I don’t know how they decide how to split the rest of us up. It will be interesting to find out who’s going where.
We will be taken to these sites on Tuesday morning. We will go with only 1 of our 2 suitcases, our medical kit, our water filter system, a trunk they have made up for us with other necessities in it, a mosquito net and our bikes. YAY!! We get our bikes. They will drive us over there and we will have a walk around. We will be taken to each homestay home so we will know where each other lives. We will meet our homestay families and then we will talk about our schedules. There will always be our LCF (language culture facilitator) in village with us for the whole 9 weeks. From what I understand we will have 6 hours of language lessons a day. 2 students per 1 teacher. From 8am to 12. Then again 2:30 to 4:30. We will learn about culture as we learn language and then in between with our host family. I’m really nervous and anxious about this part. I wasn’t the other day but anxiety is another side effect of the mefloquine. Great. Hopefully I will be better by then and at the top of my game. I was excited about this par the other day. I have been feeling so bad that if someone said today you have to go to your homestay site today or go home…I would have chosen home. That’s pretty bad. Anyway, we will be moved to these homes with large families. The men might speak French but no one speaks English. The doors to each room face out to a courtyard. There is no one big house and the bedrooms are down the hall. So I will have my own space/room with a private entrance. We will eat together and greet each other each day and relax together and drink tea…which is a whole other ceremony and tradition. Pulling tea.
From what I understand even though the women never get to hang out or eat with the men I will probably be invited to eat and have tea with them. I find that interesting. They don’t really talk. Just mostly sit. The women don’t mind from what I understand. I will learn the hierarchy of the home. There could be more than one wife, older children, etc. I will be given a Maliala name. It all sounds so exciting and so nerve wracking at the same time. I guess after the initial shock and the initial few days or week it shouldn’t be too bad. These families have been trained and what to do with us, what we eat, that we need alone time (although they can’t conceive of this concept), etc. One of the women will get up and leave me a bucket of warm water outside my door so I can take it to bathe. They will probably insist on washing my clothes (which I finally learned how to do in two buckets yesterday). They will not let me help cook or clean, although I can be pretty persistent myself. It will be interesting to see in a few weeks what the differences are between how some of the younger volunteers are doing and what they are doing at their homes opposed to how it works out for me. Age plays a huge role here. In the US we do not necessarily take care of the older and don’t show any different respect for them just because they are older. Here age is respect. Age is wisdom. Age is everything. And being in a country where the mortality age for women is 47 and 48 for men I’m just about as old as they come.
I have to back up and correct myself for a minute. Age is not the deciding factor. From what I understand some of them do not even know how old they are. They do not celebrate birthdays or recognize them in any way. So I guess it’s “elders” that receive the respect. So elder I am.
I woke up sick to my stomach and tried to eat something. My stomach was upset, my mouth was dry, I was shaking and anxious. Could put the food, the nice dry bread with peanut butter and jelly, in my mouth but could not swallow. I went into the repertoire and apparently looked pretty scary as everyone was asking if I was alright. I did not answer…I cried, and cried and cried. So a volunteer trainer took me so dizzy barely able to walk to the infirmary. I laid down for a while and they gave me a packet of Gatorade to mix in my water. I felt a little better so I went to the training that was all about us leaving for homestay (the village and family we will live with for the next 9 weeks). I stood as long as I could and then had to lay down, back up when I was better…and then back down. It was like the worst hangover in the world. And this has been three days. I’m a little pissed at PC and this could be my irritability talking, but WHY for the love of god did we not start these pills at home? What makes them think it is OK to give these pills to us every day for three days when it is a once a week pill? As it turns out, although I seem to have been the worst affected, I am not the only one. Some didn’t get their side effects until today. They said they felt dizzy and shaky but nothing they couldn’t deal with. Then bam…today they hit a brick wall. But nothing like what I had . At one point I was sitting in the dining area shaking and nauseous crying like a baby. I was trying to unplug my phone and couldn’t do it. It was horrible. Although I still may have some slight side effects over the next couple of week until my body builds up a tolerance this should never happen again…especially since I’m not dumb enough to take the three pills like that in a row again…EVER.
So I missed all the good material at the culture fair to have a pan~a made. So I bought something OK and had one made anyone and then bought a beautiful purple material kind of shiny for my dress for the swearing in. Supposedly it’s quite the party and everyone gets dressed up. There were young men on sewing machines making outfits while you waited. But there is a tailor in every village and they will do a more detailed job with embroidery around the neck and bottom and sleeves. I can get a full length dress or a top and a matching pan~a. Have it made to fit for like $5. So I’m going to wait. It’s gonna be great. There was dancing and singing. I even felt good enough to dance some. The drumming is amazing and they are just so happy and really know how to party. No alcohol involved.
Apparently the fact that I felt better was a tease. Within an hour I was shaking and nauseous and dizzy again. I hadn’t eaten all day due to lack of appetite, but I really felt like I needed to. And of course they had some American type food. Beef kabobs, French fries, some of the usually stewy stuff and some break type substance…of course. I believe they said it was fru fru. So sans the french fries I ate one kabob, a bready thing and a little stewy stuff. LOL!! That sounds so ridiculous but definitely describes what we eat. I came back to my hut and took a warm bucket bath, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, put on my pjs, took and Excederin PM and had nice thoughts of a good night sleep. After laying on my bed for about 40 minutes I figured it I could sit up without being nauseous I would write my blog into a word document so when I get internet in the morning and if I’m feeling better hopefully I can find time to post. Since tomorrow is our last full day here before leaving for homestay site for 10 days, it’s now or never…or at least 10 days.
Tomorrow we are going to find out where our homestay site is. All of the villages will be dispersed to are within an hour of where we are now. There will be 5-6 volunteers at each site. So even though we won’t be together anymore, we won’t be alone either. I assume they will split us up by language first. About 80 percent of us that are here will be learning Bambara. But there are other minority languages spoken here. Malinki, pul, fufu (or something like that) and a couple of others. Those of us that tested advanced French will be taught to speak one of the minority languages. Since most of the men speak their local language as well as French the chosen volunteers will still be able to communicate well within their village either way. I don’t know how they decide how to split the rest of us up. It will be interesting to find out who’s going where.
We will be taken to these sites on Tuesday morning. We will go with only 1 of our 2 suitcases, our medical kit, our water filter system, a trunk they have made up for us with other necessities in it, a mosquito net and our bikes. YAY!! We get our bikes. They will drive us over there and we will have a walk around. We will be taken to each homestay home so we will know where each other lives. We will meet our homestay families and then we will talk about our schedules. There will always be our LCF (language culture facilitator) in village with us for the whole 9 weeks. From what I understand we will have 6 hours of language lessons a day. 2 students per 1 teacher. From 8am to 12. Then again 2:30 to 4:30. We will learn about culture as we learn language and then in between with our host family. I’m really nervous and anxious about this part. I wasn’t the other day but anxiety is another side effect of the mefloquine. Great. Hopefully I will be better by then and at the top of my game. I was excited about this par the other day. I have been feeling so bad that if someone said today you have to go to your homestay site today or go home…I would have chosen home. That’s pretty bad. Anyway, we will be moved to these homes with large families. The men might speak French but no one speaks English. The doors to each room face out to a courtyard. There is no one big house and the bedrooms are down the hall. So I will have my own space/room with a private entrance. We will eat together and greet each other each day and relax together and drink tea…which is a whole other ceremony and tradition. Pulling tea.
From what I understand even though the women never get to hang out or eat with the men I will probably be invited to eat and have tea with them. I find that interesting. They don’t really talk. Just mostly sit. The women don’t mind from what I understand. I will learn the hierarchy of the home. There could be more than one wife, older children, etc. I will be given a Maliala name. It all sounds so exciting and so nerve wracking at the same time. I guess after the initial shock and the initial few days or week it shouldn’t be too bad. These families have been trained and what to do with us, what we eat, that we need alone time (although they can’t conceive of this concept), etc. One of the women will get up and leave me a bucket of warm water outside my door so I can take it to bathe. They will probably insist on washing my clothes (which I finally learned how to do in two buckets yesterday). They will not let me help cook or clean, although I can be pretty persistent myself. It will be interesting to see in a few weeks what the differences are between how some of the younger volunteers are doing and what they are doing at their homes opposed to how it works out for me. Age plays a huge role here. In the US we do not necessarily take care of the older and don’t show any different respect for them just because they are older. Here age is respect. Age is wisdom. Age is everything. And being in a country where the mortality age for women is 47 and 48 for men I’m just about as old as they come.
I have to back up and correct myself for a minute. Age is not the deciding factor. From what I understand some of them do not even know how old they are. They do not celebrate birthdays or recognize them in any way. So I guess it’s “elders” that receive the respect. So elder I am.
February 4, 2011
I’ve been getting pretty wordy lately so I’m going to try and journal more in little spurts so as not to bore anyone to death. Or try to remember what I want to write all at one time at the end of the when I’m tired and should be sleeping.
Today we had some culture training, diarrhea lessons (how to avoid it, not how to get it…I’m sure I’ll figure out how to get it soon enough), shots and my language interview.
Culture training was very interesting. Being immersed into another culture is one of the reasons I wanted to join PC. So it’s very exciting but also realizing how important it is to be respectful and learn and know about others cultures. There are so many interesting differences:
Dress – they are always neat and clean no matter where they are. Men wear slacks and a button up collared shirt or traditional pants and tunic all the time. If they wear less than that they are made fun of as they dress like a boy. Women always wear skirts, dresses or wraps (pana with a ~ over the n) and a shirt that covers the shoulders. In some areas the shirt should cover to the wrist and they may also need to cover their hair. Knees are ALWAYS covered no exception. Pants are more accepted now but there was a time when you could get in trouble for wearing pants…only as far back as 1985. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of African people in brightly colored skirts and tops, or pants and tunics for the men, before. That is how they dress. Every local volunteer, teacher, nurse, admin are always perfectly dressed with clothes cleaned and pressed. They are so beautiful and handsome. I wish we had stricter rules about dress. I was glad when Jarrod went to a school that required the boys to wear collared shirts and the girls appropriate clothing. Not uniforms but just respectful. We are having a cultural festiveal on Sunday. I’ll be able to buy some material and have something made and I can get a pan~a.
Food/eating – Meals is such a large part of the Malian culture. And the food here is different depending on what’s available in the different areas. In some areas you can’t get very much fruit or vegetables. In other areas you won’t be able to get much meat. In some areas they can’t afford much other than millet as their staple food. Rice is for people with money. And no matter how little they have they always want to share with you and you will be invited in at any time of the day. I’ve had experience with this when visiting ma famille afrique in San Diego. You can’t go to visit and not eat. It is very insulting. They have to cook the crap out of everything because of bacteria and parasites. No fresh, uncooked food. No salad!! I saw someone eating a salad yesterday and got so excited only to find out that was for the volunteers that have been here for quite some time. Obviously they have built up enough of a resistance that there are some things they can eat that we can’t eat quite yet. Not without suffering the consequences.
Today for lunch we ate the way we will be eating when we get to our homestay sites (the site and home that we will stay at for the duration of our training). A large mat is laid out on the floor and there can be anywhere from 3 to 6 people sitting around a huge bowl. Around the outside of the bowl was rice cooked in a tomatoey type sauce and in the middle was cabbage, carrots and some meat. Not sure exactly what kind but I’m assuming beef. But you know what happens when you assume? Then with only your right hand (I’m sure you can figure out why since we now know what you do with the left hand in the nygene) you scoop up some food, try to give it a good squeeze to make it more solid and shove it in your mouth trying not to spill it all over yourself. The food was good, the culture behind the communal bowl and just the socialization of the “event” is amazing.
Diarrhea or better known as Mr. D. I guess we were learning how not to get Mr. D. That’s good. Although I don’t think you can really avoid it. Everything has bacteria on it. So unless you boil the crap out of everything or use a filter and/or bleach diarrhea is a given. So far I haven’t pooped since I left San Diego. Everything is boiled and cooked to death. Never eat any meat that has any pink it. No fresh vegetables or salad and only fruits that you peel the skin off…after a water and bleach bath…and not until after we’re been here for a while. Keep your mouth and eyes shut during bathing. Brush your teeth with filtered, bleached water. Filter and bleach the water. They’ll be giving us a 2 gallon bucket that has a build in filter in it with a 1 gallon bucket that sits on top with the another filter. You pour bleached water into the top and it goes through the 2 filters and sits in the button bucket…that has a spigot on it. Now we will always good drinking water. At site here they do all that and always have good water available. These are the most important ways to keep from getting Mr. D.
Shots – We are scheduled for 3 shots or the first of a series of shots today. Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Typhoid. I’ve already had the Hep B series. Thankfully…it was painful and I couldn’t move my arm for days. And that was each time. Hep B is a series of 3 shots 3 months apart…I think…or maybe one. Either way I don’t need it. I got my two and went on my way.
Picture – Got my picture taken for my Peace Corps ID. As a trainee….we are not volunteers yet. That will happen April 13ish, if all goes well.
Language interview – So I had to sit with someone today to decide what my French language skills are. She was asking me questions and I had to try and answer. It wasn’t pretty. After 2 semesters of French and all the CDs I was graded at Novice-mid…at best. My French teacher would be very disappointed. From this point forward I will be learning Bambara. If there is time when I become somewhat proficient in Bambara I can get tutored in French…if I would like. Of course I would like…where else in the world will I ever use Bambara again??
Language – Today we started our first Bambara lesson. How exciting. Malians (as well as my African family at home from Uganda) is all about the greetings. And not like our greetings as if anyone exchanges them anymore, Hey what’s up? How are you? When no one really cares. It is a whole ritual. And it’s almost like reading off a script. You have to go through the whole process. Depending on the time of the day (and by time where the sun is…and then after the sun goes down. Not really a time as we know it but space in time. So you will either say “good morning” or “good day”, “good evening” or “good night”. There is a little tonal response to that and then you say it back. Then you say a formal how are you. From we were told later in culture training you never say anything but very well. Not that they don’t care but there is room for that discussion after the ceremonial greetings. Then they ask how is you family, how is your mother and then how is your father.
I ni sogoma (good morning)
N se (sounds like ‘in say’ but that N comes all the way from the back depths of the throat…this doesn’t really mean anything. And if you are addressing a man they respond with M ba...again neither mean anything). I ni sogoma.
I ka kEnE? (I was having trouble with this but it sounds like “I killed Kenny” from South Park…got it…and there are “e”s that make one sound and E’s that make another)
Toorote (those o’s aren’t really o, they are backward c’s…but there is not key for that. This means “Well”). I ka kEnE?
Toorote. Ew fa ka kEnE? (how is your father)
Tooro tu la
Ew ba Ka kEnE? (how is your mother)
And then it goes on depending on how well you know the person and the rest of the family. Then they do it back to you. You don’t have to do this if you are passing at market but when you pass by their home you have to do it. And to each home…and that’s just the hello. The goodbye is another ceremony ending with…A la ka tile here caya (said chia…if you say c as K, caya it is a bad word. That too close for comfort for me. Guess who got it wrong once in class. Fatim said she could not tell me what it meant. Hahahahah…figures sailor mouth over here is already cursing). This means May Allah give you a good day.
Amiina (amen) and everyone goes their separate ways. Now that we know this much and all the workers at camp know we do it takes 10 minutes to get from point A to point B. But they mean every word of it. It is said sincerely even though as from a script…a ceremony. No one says good morning, or good day to each other. The only greeting we use anymore at all is goodnight. So sad. It’s nice to be greeted with smiles and blessings from their god. Mmmm…maybe we should bring back respectful, polite greetings again. What a better way to get through the day.
This is one day in the life of Clare. I did more today than I did in a week at home. .
Today we had some culture training, diarrhea lessons (how to avoid it, not how to get it…I’m sure I’ll figure out how to get it soon enough), shots and my language interview.
Culture training was very interesting. Being immersed into another culture is one of the reasons I wanted to join PC. So it’s very exciting but also realizing how important it is to be respectful and learn and know about others cultures. There are so many interesting differences:
Dress – they are always neat and clean no matter where they are. Men wear slacks and a button up collared shirt or traditional pants and tunic all the time. If they wear less than that they are made fun of as they dress like a boy. Women always wear skirts, dresses or wraps (pana with a ~ over the n) and a shirt that covers the shoulders. In some areas the shirt should cover to the wrist and they may also need to cover their hair. Knees are ALWAYS covered no exception. Pants are more accepted now but there was a time when you could get in trouble for wearing pants…only as far back as 1985. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of African people in brightly colored skirts and tops, or pants and tunics for the men, before. That is how they dress. Every local volunteer, teacher, nurse, admin are always perfectly dressed with clothes cleaned and pressed. They are so beautiful and handsome. I wish we had stricter rules about dress. I was glad when Jarrod went to a school that required the boys to wear collared shirts and the girls appropriate clothing. Not uniforms but just respectful. We are having a cultural festiveal on Sunday. I’ll be able to buy some material and have something made and I can get a pan~a.
Food/eating – Meals is such a large part of the Malian culture. And the food here is different depending on what’s available in the different areas. In some areas you can’t get very much fruit or vegetables. In other areas you won’t be able to get much meat. In some areas they can’t afford much other than millet as their staple food. Rice is for people with money. And no matter how little they have they always want to share with you and you will be invited in at any time of the day. I’ve had experience with this when visiting ma famille afrique in San Diego. You can’t go to visit and not eat. It is very insulting. They have to cook the crap out of everything because of bacteria and parasites. No fresh, uncooked food. No salad!! I saw someone eating a salad yesterday and got so excited only to find out that was for the volunteers that have been here for quite some time. Obviously they have built up enough of a resistance that there are some things they can eat that we can’t eat quite yet. Not without suffering the consequences.
Today for lunch we ate the way we will be eating when we get to our homestay sites (the site and home that we will stay at for the duration of our training). A large mat is laid out on the floor and there can be anywhere from 3 to 6 people sitting around a huge bowl. Around the outside of the bowl was rice cooked in a tomatoey type sauce and in the middle was cabbage, carrots and some meat. Not sure exactly what kind but I’m assuming beef. But you know what happens when you assume? Then with only your right hand (I’m sure you can figure out why since we now know what you do with the left hand in the nygene) you scoop up some food, try to give it a good squeeze to make it more solid and shove it in your mouth trying not to spill it all over yourself. The food was good, the culture behind the communal bowl and just the socialization of the “event” is amazing.
Diarrhea or better known as Mr. D. I guess we were learning how not to get Mr. D. That’s good. Although I don’t think you can really avoid it. Everything has bacteria on it. So unless you boil the crap out of everything or use a filter and/or bleach diarrhea is a given. So far I haven’t pooped since I left San Diego. Everything is boiled and cooked to death. Never eat any meat that has any pink it. No fresh vegetables or salad and only fruits that you peel the skin off…after a water and bleach bath…and not until after we’re been here for a while. Keep your mouth and eyes shut during bathing. Brush your teeth with filtered, bleached water. Filter and bleach the water. They’ll be giving us a 2 gallon bucket that has a build in filter in it with a 1 gallon bucket that sits on top with the another filter. You pour bleached water into the top and it goes through the 2 filters and sits in the button bucket…that has a spigot on it. Now we will always good drinking water. At site here they do all that and always have good water available. These are the most important ways to keep from getting Mr. D.
Shots – We are scheduled for 3 shots or the first of a series of shots today. Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Typhoid. I’ve already had the Hep B series. Thankfully…it was painful and I couldn’t move my arm for days. And that was each time. Hep B is a series of 3 shots 3 months apart…I think…or maybe one. Either way I don’t need it. I got my two and went on my way.
Picture – Got my picture taken for my Peace Corps ID. As a trainee….we are not volunteers yet. That will happen April 13ish, if all goes well.
Language interview – So I had to sit with someone today to decide what my French language skills are. She was asking me questions and I had to try and answer. It wasn’t pretty. After 2 semesters of French and all the CDs I was graded at Novice-mid…at best. My French teacher would be very disappointed. From this point forward I will be learning Bambara. If there is time when I become somewhat proficient in Bambara I can get tutored in French…if I would like. Of course I would like…where else in the world will I ever use Bambara again??
Language – Today we started our first Bambara lesson. How exciting. Malians (as well as my African family at home from Uganda) is all about the greetings. And not like our greetings as if anyone exchanges them anymore, Hey what’s up? How are you? When no one really cares. It is a whole ritual. And it’s almost like reading off a script. You have to go through the whole process. Depending on the time of the day (and by time where the sun is…and then after the sun goes down. Not really a time as we know it but space in time. So you will either say “good morning” or “good day”, “good evening” or “good night”. There is a little tonal response to that and then you say it back. Then you say a formal how are you. From we were told later in culture training you never say anything but very well. Not that they don’t care but there is room for that discussion after the ceremonial greetings. Then they ask how is you family, how is your mother and then how is your father.
I ni sogoma (good morning)
N se (sounds like ‘in say’ but that N comes all the way from the back depths of the throat…this doesn’t really mean anything. And if you are addressing a man they respond with M ba...again neither mean anything). I ni sogoma.
I ka kEnE? (I was having trouble with this but it sounds like “I killed Kenny” from South Park…got it…and there are “e”s that make one sound and E’s that make another)
Toorote (those o’s aren’t really o, they are backward c’s…but there is not key for that. This means “Well”). I ka kEnE?
Toorote. Ew fa ka kEnE? (how is your father)
Tooro tu la
Ew ba Ka kEnE? (how is your mother)
And then it goes on depending on how well you know the person and the rest of the family. Then they do it back to you. You don’t have to do this if you are passing at market but when you pass by their home you have to do it. And to each home…and that’s just the hello. The goodbye is another ceremony ending with…A la ka tile here caya (said chia…if you say c as K, caya it is a bad word. That too close for comfort for me. Guess who got it wrong once in class. Fatim said she could not tell me what it meant. Hahahahah…figures sailor mouth over here is already cursing). This means May Allah give you a good day.
Amiina (amen) and everyone goes their separate ways. Now that we know this much and all the workers at camp know we do it takes 10 minutes to get from point A to point B. But they mean every word of it. It is said sincerely even though as from a script…a ceremony. No one says good morning, or good day to each other. The only greeting we use anymore at all is goodnight. So sad. It’s nice to be greeted with smiles and blessings from their god. Mmmm…maybe we should bring back respectful, polite greetings again. What a better way to get through the day.
This is one day in the life of Clare. I did more today than I did in a week at home. .
Here today, gone to Mali!!
I finally slept. After we passed the snowcapped mountains between France and Spain. I finally fell asleep. I woke up about 30 minutes before we landed. It was dark so unfortunately I couldn’t see anything but I just knew I was over Africa. I don’t think I’ve had a prouder, more exciting, heart encompassing moment as I did when the wheels of the plane touched down at Bamako airport. I cried a little…like a girl. Although the airport is an international airport it is very small. No walkways that come out to meet the airplane. We had to climb down the stairs and get in a shuttle that literally drove us 100 yards or so where we got off and entered into customs. We were laughing at the short ride it was. We certainly could have walked it just as fast. It is 86 degrees. While we were waiting to get onto the bus I was so happy to hear that I wasn’t the only person crying when we touched down.
The wait through customs was nothing. We filled out the customs paperwork and got through within a half an hour for all 64 of us. There were PC volunteers that were already in the airport collecting our bags. Between all of us, the other folks that flew in with us and all the people trying to grab your bags and put them on carts so they could charge you to walk them outside it was a huge cluster!! But oddly enough we were out of there and piling onto buses within an hour. We then had a 45 minute ride to Tubaniso. A village set up for training that will house us for the next 6 days. Driving down the streets was interesting. A lot of people that don’t look where they are going nor do they care. Little scooters pulling out from lord knows where and almost getting killed. Didn’t seem to bother them. Everyone just kept on moving. Finally we pull into the training center. It was like something out of a movie. Round mud huts with thatched roofs. Little square mud buildings I would later learn are the nygenes (nyee-gin…bathrooms). Thatched buildings without walls called hangers. And a couple of other buildings here and there throughout in what was a huge compound.
We were given a tour of the repertoire/dining room, the main hanger were we would have our training in the morning, the sleeping huts all lettered and numbered, the nygenes and a quick lesson on how to use them. It’s a little building that when you walk up to the door you are supposed to clap. If someone is in there they will make some kind of noise…shuffle their feet or clear their throat. Then you will know you need to wait your turn. Once inside there’s a little turn that brings you into a little area about 5 feet by 5 feet with a hole right in the middle. There is what looks like a pot cover over the top but you remove and the hole is the size of a dinner plate. Pretty small really. I’m thinking I’m going to wind up peeing all over the place including my feet...and lord knows what’s going to happen when I have to reeeeaaaallllyyyyy go to the bathroom. No one could possibly make it in that little hole. It might be time to whip out my camping toilet seat. I don’t think I can do it squatting over a hole. Now before you go in, right by the water spigot there is what looks like a teapot. Salidaga in bambara. You are supposed to fill it with water and bring it into the bathroom with you…like my ass bottle…a portable bidet. After you finish your business you are supposed to take the pot around your back and pour the water down the crack of your butt…always holding the pot in your right hand. Then as the water is pouring down your butt crack you are supposed to take you left hand and wipe yourself…with your hand…wipe yourself. I don’t like that idea very much. Then when you are done you go over to the spigot to return the pot for the next person and wash your hands. Hmmmm…when in Rome, right?
Next door are the showers. A decent size room with a water spigot towards the bottom and a knob that has a pipe that leads up to a shower head. Apparently the shower head is a tease as when you turn it on the water only trickles out. I’m not taking a shower tonight because it’s already midnight and dark and I have to learn the new bucket bath style. I would rather do that in the light of morning. I will go to bed after traveling for 20 hours without a shower. I’m sure it won’t be the worst thing I do while I’m here.
After we find our huts and our roommates we put our luggage in and then head to the repertoire for something to eat. I hear they eat a lot of carbs. They don’t have a lot of access to vegetables, fruit and meats. Carbs are cheap and filling. For our snack we are served boiled potatoes with sauce and what could possibly be little pieces of meat. The next bowl is filled with spaghetti with sauce (all the sauces are really undistinguishable) and then there’s the bread. Of course there’s bread. Then they have soda. Coke, apple soda, pineapple soda and orange. No diet?
I’m so tired. But we have electricity and wifi. I have to take advantage of it while I can. By next Tuesday I don’t know where I’ll be and when I’ll be back to contact everyone. Of course with the time difference it’s only 4pm Cali time. The boys will be at school, my brother will be at work…I want to let someone know I’m here but no one will be around. That’s crappy. They should be home…waiting for me to call. WTH?!! By the time I went to bed it was 2am. I set my alarm to wake me at 6am. I wanted plenty of time to check out the shower situation, take a bath, get dressed and be at breakfast by 8am. I fell right to sleep. I was sooooo tired. Apparently not tired enough. I woke up and thought is it 6am already and how come my alarm didn’t go off. It’s 4am. I’ve only been sleeping for 2 hours. WHY…I was so tired. I laid there and laid there and tried to fall back asleep.
When I finally got up I got my body wash together my shampoo, my little towel and headed for the showers. I put some soap in the bucket and filled it about half way with water. It actually wasn’t as bad as you might think. The water wasn’t warm but the air already was. I smelled so bad it could have been ice water and I would have been happy. They have a cauldron with water on a fire all the time so you can have warm bucket water but everything from the night before is such a blur. I’m sure I would never find the cauldron. So this is fine. I turned on the drippy shower head and got my hair and body a little wet. I shampooed and rinsed my hair first. Then I squatted down by my little bucket and washed myself all up. It actually felt good. I think it will feel better when I get to my site in 10 weeks and get to set up my 5 gallon camping solar shower bag. I might still use the bucket with soapy water but at least I can rinse under running water. After I soaped all up I dumped the bucket and filled it with clean water and rinsed. The whole process took about 10 minutes. I kind of liked it.
Training was good today. We got to meet all the local volunteers, local big wigs and of course the ever famous ice breakers. We got a lot of information of what will happen over the next couple of days from shots we will get tomorrow, malaria pills we will start today and the 90,000 cfa’s (Mali currency) we would receive for walking around money. Sounds like a lot, right? I have 90,000 of something in my pocket. Woohoo. Then we all received appointments to get tested on our French skills, when we will meet with our sector (mine being health) coordinators so they can get an idea of where we want to be. North Mali, the desert, the jungle down south, a small village or a larger town and our medical interview appointments to talk about our medical files in general. In between all of that we are in training everyday from 8am to 6pm until Tuesday when we will be moved to our homestay sites. The sites we will be at for the next 9 weeks during training. We will get one on one instruction in language and culture while living with a Malian family.
Breakfast started out with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on big fat rolls. Mali is famous for their peanuts and they make fresh peanut butter. It was so good. Then there was rice and saucey stuff for lunch and spaghetti and bread for dinner. I’ve been taking one little spoon at each meal as I came here to lose weight not gain it. I don’t want anyone to roll me out of here. I’m a little hungry but I’m sure it will pass.
It’s now 9pm. I got to use my Magic Jack and talk to my sister Gail today. I tried earlier with my brother but we were having bad connections so I will try again tomorrow. I will get up at 6am so I can call him at 10pm Cali time. Maybe we’ll have better luck. I’m good though. I don’t feel lonely. I know it’s only been a couple of days since I even left, but it feels like much longer. So much has happened.
The wait through customs was nothing. We filled out the customs paperwork and got through within a half an hour for all 64 of us. There were PC volunteers that were already in the airport collecting our bags. Between all of us, the other folks that flew in with us and all the people trying to grab your bags and put them on carts so they could charge you to walk them outside it was a huge cluster!! But oddly enough we were out of there and piling onto buses within an hour. We then had a 45 minute ride to Tubaniso. A village set up for training that will house us for the next 6 days. Driving down the streets was interesting. A lot of people that don’t look where they are going nor do they care. Little scooters pulling out from lord knows where and almost getting killed. Didn’t seem to bother them. Everyone just kept on moving. Finally we pull into the training center. It was like something out of a movie. Round mud huts with thatched roofs. Little square mud buildings I would later learn are the nygenes (nyee-gin…bathrooms). Thatched buildings without walls called hangers. And a couple of other buildings here and there throughout in what was a huge compound.
We were given a tour of the repertoire/dining room, the main hanger were we would have our training in the morning, the sleeping huts all lettered and numbered, the nygenes and a quick lesson on how to use them. It’s a little building that when you walk up to the door you are supposed to clap. If someone is in there they will make some kind of noise…shuffle their feet or clear their throat. Then you will know you need to wait your turn. Once inside there’s a little turn that brings you into a little area about 5 feet by 5 feet with a hole right in the middle. There is what looks like a pot cover over the top but you remove and the hole is the size of a dinner plate. Pretty small really. I’m thinking I’m going to wind up peeing all over the place including my feet...and lord knows what’s going to happen when I have to reeeeaaaallllyyyyy go to the bathroom. No one could possibly make it in that little hole. It might be time to whip out my camping toilet seat. I don’t think I can do it squatting over a hole. Now before you go in, right by the water spigot there is what looks like a teapot. Salidaga in bambara. You are supposed to fill it with water and bring it into the bathroom with you…like my ass bottle…a portable bidet. After you finish your business you are supposed to take the pot around your back and pour the water down the crack of your butt…always holding the pot in your right hand. Then as the water is pouring down your butt crack you are supposed to take you left hand and wipe yourself…with your hand…wipe yourself. I don’t like that idea very much. Then when you are done you go over to the spigot to return the pot for the next person and wash your hands. Hmmmm…when in Rome, right?
Next door are the showers. A decent size room with a water spigot towards the bottom and a knob that has a pipe that leads up to a shower head. Apparently the shower head is a tease as when you turn it on the water only trickles out. I’m not taking a shower tonight because it’s already midnight and dark and I have to learn the new bucket bath style. I would rather do that in the light of morning. I will go to bed after traveling for 20 hours without a shower. I’m sure it won’t be the worst thing I do while I’m here.
After we find our huts and our roommates we put our luggage in and then head to the repertoire for something to eat. I hear they eat a lot of carbs. They don’t have a lot of access to vegetables, fruit and meats. Carbs are cheap and filling. For our snack we are served boiled potatoes with sauce and what could possibly be little pieces of meat. The next bowl is filled with spaghetti with sauce (all the sauces are really undistinguishable) and then there’s the bread. Of course there’s bread. Then they have soda. Coke, apple soda, pineapple soda and orange. No diet?
I’m so tired. But we have electricity and wifi. I have to take advantage of it while I can. By next Tuesday I don’t know where I’ll be and when I’ll be back to contact everyone. Of course with the time difference it’s only 4pm Cali time. The boys will be at school, my brother will be at work…I want to let someone know I’m here but no one will be around. That’s crappy. They should be home…waiting for me to call. WTH?!! By the time I went to bed it was 2am. I set my alarm to wake me at 6am. I wanted plenty of time to check out the shower situation, take a bath, get dressed and be at breakfast by 8am. I fell right to sleep. I was sooooo tired. Apparently not tired enough. I woke up and thought is it 6am already and how come my alarm didn’t go off. It’s 4am. I’ve only been sleeping for 2 hours. WHY…I was so tired. I laid there and laid there and tried to fall back asleep.
When I finally got up I got my body wash together my shampoo, my little towel and headed for the showers. I put some soap in the bucket and filled it about half way with water. It actually wasn’t as bad as you might think. The water wasn’t warm but the air already was. I smelled so bad it could have been ice water and I would have been happy. They have a cauldron with water on a fire all the time so you can have warm bucket water but everything from the night before is such a blur. I’m sure I would never find the cauldron. So this is fine. I turned on the drippy shower head and got my hair and body a little wet. I shampooed and rinsed my hair first. Then I squatted down by my little bucket and washed myself all up. It actually felt good. I think it will feel better when I get to my site in 10 weeks and get to set up my 5 gallon camping solar shower bag. I might still use the bucket with soapy water but at least I can rinse under running water. After I soaped all up I dumped the bucket and filled it with clean water and rinsed. The whole process took about 10 minutes. I kind of liked it.
Training was good today. We got to meet all the local volunteers, local big wigs and of course the ever famous ice breakers. We got a lot of information of what will happen over the next couple of days from shots we will get tomorrow, malaria pills we will start today and the 90,000 cfa’s (Mali currency) we would receive for walking around money. Sounds like a lot, right? I have 90,000 of something in my pocket. Woohoo. Then we all received appointments to get tested on our French skills, when we will meet with our sector (mine being health) coordinators so they can get an idea of where we want to be. North Mali, the desert, the jungle down south, a small village or a larger town and our medical interview appointments to talk about our medical files in general. In between all of that we are in training everyday from 8am to 6pm until Tuesday when we will be moved to our homestay sites. The sites we will be at for the next 9 weeks during training. We will get one on one instruction in language and culture while living with a Malian family.
Breakfast started out with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on big fat rolls. Mali is famous for their peanuts and they make fresh peanut butter. It was so good. Then there was rice and saucey stuff for lunch and spaghetti and bread for dinner. I’ve been taking one little spoon at each meal as I came here to lose weight not gain it. I don’t want anyone to roll me out of here. I’m a little hungry but I’m sure it will pass.
It’s now 9pm. I got to use my Magic Jack and talk to my sister Gail today. I tried earlier with my brother but we were having bad connections so I will try again tomorrow. I will get up at 6am so I can call him at 10pm Cali time. Maybe we’ll have better luck. I’m good though. I don’t feel lonely. I know it’s only been a couple of days since I even left, but it feels like much longer. So much has happened.
February 2, 2011
Or at least I think it’s February 2. I am so tired I don’t know if I’m coming or going. We left DC at 10pm last night. I had to pay another overweight fee. JERKS!! My bag was 7 pounds overweight and they charged me $100. What’s a girl to do. I paid. They were really busting people for overweight carry-ons because the flight was full. So I had to sneak my rolling carry on past them. They would have made me check it and it would have been $200. I think I would have had to ditch it at that point.
It is 12:30 pm and after a 6 ½ hour flight we are finally in Paris. It is 6:30 DC time and 3:30 San Diego time. There is a 9 hour difference between here and San Diego. When I get to Mali it will only be an 8 hour difference. I can’t believe this is actually happening. I had a moment in the DC airport that I almost ditched and ran. I was sick to my stomach for the past 2 months. Then the last few days before I left I felt unusually calm. Right up until this point in the airport. I was standing in front of the gate and they were preparing to board and all I could think was have I lost my freakin mind. To make matters worse I called the boys to say goodbye one last time. Big mistake. I called Jarrod first. I started to cry as I was telling him I just wanted to call for the last time before I left the US. He told me don’t cry, I’m proud of you and you’ve wanted this for so long. This is a good thing. All true but doesn’t make me feel less bad for leaving them. Then he had to go because he was at work. To torture myself some more I called Josh as well. He was playing video games with his friend. He thought I was in Paris already. Apparently he doesn’t pay attention when I talk. He didn’t realize I was crying so I got off the phone before he did. I want them to not think about it and be sad or miss me. I want their lives to continue as usual as much as they can. All my new PC friends had to see me crying and were trying to console me. They are all so young and don’t have kids so they can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like. But they were very supportive and very sympathetic. They really are a great group.
I thought I was going to feel alienated from them because of the age difference but not one of them has made me feel that way at all. There are only 3 people out of 64 that are older than I am. A married couple and a single lady from Iowa. The rest of the group is 22 thru around 30ish. I was so happy when I told a few of them my age and they were shocked. The PC trainer that led the orientation was also surprised when I told her my age. That made me feel good. I hope I look as young when I get back after 2 years in the African sun.
3 more hours in the Paris airport before we board for our flight to Bamako, Mali. It is very foggy and hazy here. We couldn’t see anything as we arrived at the airport. And although we had a 5 hour layover it wasn’t enough time to do anything. We can’t leave the airport because the time it would take to get in and out and through security, plus the time to get into town. Can’t be done. We are laying around. Some people sleeping because for some reason no one could sleep on the plane. I took a Dramamine and an Exederin PM and still couldn’t sleep. My head is spinning right now. The flight to Bamako is 5 ½ hours. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep through part of it.
We get into Bamako at just before 10pm their local time. It will probably take 2 hours to get our luggage and get thru customs. Then we have to load the buses with 64 people and all of their luggage. From what I understand we will go directly to the training center which is about a 45 minute drive. Of course then we will have to unload the bus. They are planning a little meeting to fill us in on logistical stuff. Where (and how) we bathe, how to use the bathrooms (hole in the ground), where we will be sleeping and at least what will be happening for the next week….including starting training first thing tomorrow morning. By the time we get set up in our sleeping quarters (we will be staying at the training center for the first week until we move in with our host families) it should be about 1-2 am their time. We have to be up and will start training I believe at 8am. Another PC motto, besides the one that you are not a volunteer until you’ve shit your pants, is “The hardest job you’ll ever love”. We’ll find out soon if that’s true.
I’ll write more tomorrow, but right now I have got to shut my eyes…just for a minute.
It is 12:30 pm and after a 6 ½ hour flight we are finally in Paris. It is 6:30 DC time and 3:30 San Diego time. There is a 9 hour difference between here and San Diego. When I get to Mali it will only be an 8 hour difference. I can’t believe this is actually happening. I had a moment in the DC airport that I almost ditched and ran. I was sick to my stomach for the past 2 months. Then the last few days before I left I felt unusually calm. Right up until this point in the airport. I was standing in front of the gate and they were preparing to board and all I could think was have I lost my freakin mind. To make matters worse I called the boys to say goodbye one last time. Big mistake. I called Jarrod first. I started to cry as I was telling him I just wanted to call for the last time before I left the US. He told me don’t cry, I’m proud of you and you’ve wanted this for so long. This is a good thing. All true but doesn’t make me feel less bad for leaving them. Then he had to go because he was at work. To torture myself some more I called Josh as well. He was playing video games with his friend. He thought I was in Paris already. Apparently he doesn’t pay attention when I talk. He didn’t realize I was crying so I got off the phone before he did. I want them to not think about it and be sad or miss me. I want their lives to continue as usual as much as they can. All my new PC friends had to see me crying and were trying to console me. They are all so young and don’t have kids so they can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like. But they were very supportive and very sympathetic. They really are a great group.
I thought I was going to feel alienated from them because of the age difference but not one of them has made me feel that way at all. There are only 3 people out of 64 that are older than I am. A married couple and a single lady from Iowa. The rest of the group is 22 thru around 30ish. I was so happy when I told a few of them my age and they were shocked. The PC trainer that led the orientation was also surprised when I told her my age. That made me feel good. I hope I look as young when I get back after 2 years in the African sun.
3 more hours in the Paris airport before we board for our flight to Bamako, Mali. It is very foggy and hazy here. We couldn’t see anything as we arrived at the airport. And although we had a 5 hour layover it wasn’t enough time to do anything. We can’t leave the airport because the time it would take to get in and out and through security, plus the time to get into town. Can’t be done. We are laying around. Some people sleeping because for some reason no one could sleep on the plane. I took a Dramamine and an Exederin PM and still couldn’t sleep. My head is spinning right now. The flight to Bamako is 5 ½ hours. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep through part of it.
We get into Bamako at just before 10pm their local time. It will probably take 2 hours to get our luggage and get thru customs. Then we have to load the buses with 64 people and all of their luggage. From what I understand we will go directly to the training center which is about a 45 minute drive. Of course then we will have to unload the bus. They are planning a little meeting to fill us in on logistical stuff. Where (and how) we bathe, how to use the bathrooms (hole in the ground), where we will be sleeping and at least what will be happening for the next week….including starting training first thing tomorrow morning. By the time we get set up in our sleeping quarters (we will be staying at the training center for the first week until we move in with our host families) it should be about 1-2 am their time. We have to be up and will start training I believe at 8am. Another PC motto, besides the one that you are not a volunteer until you’ve shit your pants, is “The hardest job you’ll ever love”. We’ll find out soon if that’s true.
I’ll write more tomorrow, but right now I have got to shut my eyes…just for a minute.
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