No Troubles

Where to start?? The last week feels like several years worth of experiences. I visited the village where I'll be living for the next two years. It totally fits every expectation (good and bad) that I'd imagined. It's a really small village, about 400 or possibly 500 people. It's "in the bush" meaning far far from civilization. Needless to say there's no running water or electricity. The morning routine of taking a shower (which is repeated again before dinner) involves waking up with the sun to the sounds of roosters and donkeys (and if you've never heard a donkey, consider it a blessing), then I walk to the well with my bucket, hitch it to the rope, and drop it down. I'm going to have arms of iron soon, because, man, that bucket is HEAVY to pull back up, even with a pulley. Then I carry it on my head back to my house, and take a bucket bath. All of this is done in total silence, as you're not allowed to greet anyone until after you've washed your face. Once clean, I come back out of my house and greet everyone. This is not just a simple 'hello,' but rather an extended interview process with every person encountered. The dialogue is totally scripted and, loosely translated, goes something like this:

A: you and morning
B: N-say, you and morning
A: peace in the night?
B: only peace
A: are you in good health?
B: no troubles
A: is your father in good health?
B: no troubles
A: is your mother in good health?
B: no troubles
A: is your family in good health?
B: no troubles.
A: N-say
B: N-say
A: N-say
B: peace in the night?
A: only peace
B: are you in good health
A: no troubles
etc....

Then you move on to the next person and start over again. There is no variation. Even if your father is dying of malaria, you have to say 'no troubles.' There's also really no translation for "N-say." If you're a guy you'd say "N-baa" instead, but it's really just like a "yeah, man."

I can see that I'll have no lack of water/sanitation projects over the next two years. There are so many obvious things to be done, and more that I'm sure I don't know about yet. There are several wells in the village, all of which I'm told go dry after the rainy season (which we're in now). Also, many of the houses have negens (poop holes) that drain right into the street, which is muddy and covered in green slime where mosquitos like to breed. The village has been waiting for a volunteer for a long time, and I can sense that they're incredibly motivated. The hard part might be finding times to work; the women (just like in Missalabugu) work in the fields and cook all day, as do many of the men. The older men tend to sit around most of the day drinking tea and taking naps.



The food is terrible. Everyone eats a dish called "toh" for breakfast lunch and dinner. It's basically a grey paste made of millet that has the texture of play-doh and tastes like feet. Then they put a green snot sauce on it and eat it together out of a huge bowl.




I enjoy the communal aspect of eating, but there's no way I can choke down toh for every meal. So the last morning I was there, I borrowed a little stove and pot and made an omelette. The people in the village were so fascinated they started bringing over eggs for me to cook for them, and soon I had a small omelette restaurant going. It was unbelievable.



My house is totally pimp. It's made of mud, but it feels like a mansion. I've got 4 rooms, a negen, and a big courtyard with a tree. I've already decorated and furnished it in my head, and I've got plans to start a garden in the courtyard to grow some vegetables.



It's also pretty easy to get to Segou (the closest big city) from my site. I have to bike for an hour and a half to get to the main road, and then catch a bus into town (which is about a 30 min ride). But Segou is really an amazing city. It's much cleaner and more compact than Bamako, making it nice to walk around. It's also right on the Niger river, so there's some boat traffic and some terrific sunsets.





I spent two nights there with the rest of the volunteers in the region, eating pizza and going out to the dance clubs - quite a contrast to the slow pace of life in the village. Then on the way back, the bus made a stop so that everyone could get out and pray by the side of the road.


(this is the mosque in my village)

I can’t help but compare everything here to India. It’s the same in so many ways, yet lacking in certain details, the most noticeable and ruffling I attribute to what I see as a diminished appreciation for beauty, in an abstract sense. In Indian villages, even though poverty and sanitation are just as bad, there was always time to draw a pattern or a mandala on the ground, and there was a certain pride in appearance, a respect for design. I don’t quite see that here. It might be that it’s there hiding in a form that I’m not able to discern, but I find myself more stricken by the poverty when it’s mixed with this acceptance or lack of ambition for something better. They have nothing. And even if they have potable water and a lower infant mortality rate after I’m gone, I’m wondering how to give them beauty that’s sustainable.

leaves and peanut butter

I'm back at Tubani So (with electricity and internet!) for the next few days. I finally found out where my permanent site will be in Mali: Tongo. It's a really small village south of Segou, which is a pretty big city. I'm going to visit on Monday to see my house and meet the chief. Then it's back to Tubani So for more technical training, then back to Missalabugu for another few weeks for more language training. I'm really amazed at the amount of Bambara I've learned in such a short time. I've gone from cave-man speak (I. Water. Get.) to actually being able to have pretty decent conversations with people. We had language testing yesterday, and my Bambara is now actually better than my French! It helps that there are no verb conjugations, and very simple grammar.
Other than constantly feeling like I've been hit by a train because of the heat, I've been surprisingly healthy so far. It's a challenge to find protein in the village, because all they eat is millet mush or rice for every meal. (Hence, it's no wonder that so many of them are malnourished with bloated bellies). So I've been eating a ton of peanuts (which my family farms), eggs, and the occasional fish, served whole. They also make this sauce from leaves and peanut butter which sounds gross, but is actually kind of like Indian saag if you use your imagination. I've been trying to help with the cooking as much as I can, both to learn myself and to encourage them to eat more veggies and protein. And when I'm really craving something other than mush, we fry potatoes in oil and have make-shift french fries. Totally yummy.
I'm amazed by the hard lives of the women in my village. They wake up with the sun, pound millet for an hour, cook breakfast, go to the field and farm all day planting peanuts one by one in the relentless sun, come home to pound more millet and cook dinner, wash clothes and dishes, go to bed and do it all over again. It makes my 10 hours a day of language training seem like leisure.

Woosh, Baaa!

This is my room in my family's compound. It's pretty pimp compared to some of the other houses. (I guess that's what you get when you live with the chief...) We've also got a tv that they hook up to a car battery, and watch brazilian soap operas dubbed in french, which no one in my family speaks or understands. We also get the news occasionally, which makes me realize how totally out of touch I am. There was a brief story about some bridge that collapsed in America? What's up with that?



This is Lisa (my fellow trainee) and I after biking to the bigger town down the road.


...and this is the bridge between Missalabugu and the town. We biked over there, and then it started pouring rain. The water rose almost 2 meters above the bridge, so we were stuck for two hours waiting for it to go down. A man with some sheep tried to cross while the current was still going over the bridge, and a sheep got carried away down the river. Woosh. Just like that. Baaa!

BaSeBa

This is my village!

There's 4 of us staying in Missalabugu for training. It's a really small village, with only about 250 people, most of whom are children. It's also pretty isolated; we have to bike for 30 minutes over rugged dirt roads to get to a slightly larger town where we can buy a coke or fruit. From there, it's a 20 minute taxi ride to get to the market in the next town.
The day we arrived, we were greated by the entire village with drums and music. Then we were taken to a shady spot with four chairs where the chief formally welcomed us. We presented Kola nuts to the elder of the village, recited a brief speech of "we're happy to be here, our mothers and fathers greet you." and then everyone formed a circle and two men in wooden masks and hula skirts did some crazy complex dance moves. It was pretty amazing.
Life has quieted down a lot since then. In a typical day, I wake up with the sun and roosters, bathe, eat breakfast (I've taught them to make scrambled eggs and toasted bread), then go to "school."



This is my classroom. It's just 4 chairs under a tree. We spend all morning here, come home for lunch, go back to school, come home for dinner, and then go to bed when the sun goes down. There's no electricity or running water, so there's not much you can do after it gets dark.
Last week we went to the market and bought 4 chickens to have for dinner. We tied their feet together and brought them (alive) back to the village. Uor teacher cut their throats and de-feathered them, then we cut them open and took out the guts (most of which we ate!). I haven't been served a goat head, but I've now eaten chicken kidneys, livers, fish heads the look like snake heads, and lots of random mush.
Learning Bambara is endlessly amusing. There are so many compound words that totally crack me up. For example, the word for arm (bolakala) is hand + stick, a butt (bobara) is poop + bowl, and anus (boda) is poop + door. The word for freckles (alakadabaji) literally means ink dots made by Allah's feather pen. Mr. D (konoboli) is stomach + run, and petrol (taji) is fire + water. The cardinal directions are also funny: north (kokodugu) is the village of salt, south (worodugu) is the village where you get Kola nuts, west (tilelan) is sun + lay down, and east (koran) is mecca.
My host family is really wonderful. Polygamy is very common in Mali, so the dugutigi (chief of the village) has 3 wives. They don't make much distinction between who's child is who's, and just pass the babies around from naked boob to naked boob. It was a bit shocking at first, but like everything else, I'm getting used to it.

I've been given a Malian name: BaSeBa Tarawele, which they think is much easier to pronounce than Mary. I'm named after the chief's mother (ba = mother) and everyone tells me that means I'm the mother of the whole village.
More pictures to come when I get another break from training!