Songs that have kept me sane- Good time- Brazilian girls
Deflef Schrempf- band of horses
Book- Monique in the mango rains. I just traded a friend Half the Sky for her copy of Monique in the Mango Rains- just started it and its soooo good. A much more eloquently written version of what I hope my blog will be like. Pick up a copy if you want to know more about Peace Corps and Peace Corps Mali!!
Ok, so as I am re-reading my blog before posting it, I realize that it is kind of boring and depressing and not really that funny or written very well… so I apologize. When I am happy and having fun I am not writing on my computer, and the only time that I actually type stuff up is at night in my hut under my mosquito net, listening to donkeys cry and wondering if the roof will blow off my hut in these hurricane like rain storms. But, this is the first time I have had internet in basically 2 weeks so I will upload everything below.
After spending the first 5 days in Mali at the Peace Corps compound near the capital we left our new home for home stays in surrounding villages all with a thousand inhabitants or less. The Peace Corps compound was a rough adjustment into the life style change, but I was finally getting used to it. It feels like my grandpas farm in Texas really, just a little more rudimentary. And then there’s the culture shock and food shock and lack of friends and family. It was an old agricultural training ground. But we were always surrounded by the 80 other volunteers. Moving to home stay is a big deal because now we are in the real Africa. My village has about 2000 people. I live in my own hut that is a part of a greater compound with a few other huts. Now we get our own water, speak Barbara, the West African dialect I will be learning, and do everything with 100 kids following us. But for the first time, we are alone. I expect some people to drop after this. No one has dropped yet, except for the eight or so who didn’t show up to orientation in Phillie. This is hard though because now we are alone with our thoughts, force fed a new language for 8 hours a day in class and then surrounded by it at home with kids pointing at things and expecting you to learn at a genius pace. But this is real, this is probably what everyone pictures when they thing of the Peace Corps. Lots of flies, malnourished kids, mosquito nets, mud huts with thatched roves, and ethnic scaring on the faces of my new village friends. It’s hard right now though mentally because my birthday is coming up and I feel really nostalgic and home sick. I can’t even call my friends or check my email because in this village there is no electricity or internet so I won’t be able to contact anyone till a week or so after my birthday. But overall, I know the Peace Corps make a difference here and I won’t quit early. And after meeting the other kids here, it’s just amazing. Everyone is so different and not at all cookie cutters, like I imagined. There are so many good ideas and experiences floating around. It’s just crazy to finally be here, surrounded by the people who I used to seek out, and actually doing this when for so long I just heard other people s stories about it.
We arrived at the home stay village in the afternoon to overwhelming feelings. We drove down a severely potholed not really existent dirt road for about 30 min before spotting the thatched roves in the near distance. Then we could hear the drums and chanting of the celebration. I met some family and friends of all the teenage boys who befriended me first, yelling HEY TUBABOO!! Which means hey white person, or more specifically, hey you white French colonialist. Apparently we get called that for the next 2 years, but it’s funny and I always ask them what it means as if I don’t know and they get really embarrassed. About my host family, my host mom is 38 or 40 and has 9 kids, the oldest of which is 20. Luckily most of the older sons in the family speak French so they really saved me, I would have been so overwhelmed if they hadn’t been here to help me sort things out. And I can ask them how to say things in Bambarra. They are awesome though, so eager to walk around with me and hang out and really cool. One has passed the DELF exam and is studying in Bamako but right now it is summer time. But regardless, the university teachers were on strike all last year so the schools are now an entire year behind. Supposedly this week they are coming up with something. Feels just like being in France again!
A current Peace Corps volunteer told me that the first 2 hours of home stay are the hardest of the entire 2 years. And that the only advice they have it “don’t quit”, even when you get Guardia or feel like it’s too hard to learn this African dialect… I can’t say that I didn’t weigh the pros and cons of going home during the first 3 days in Mali, but right after that I guess I got over the bump because I haven’t considered going home since then. Maybe it’s because they were overdosing us on methloquane malaria drugs to get our levels up. I still have an almost bipolar relationship with being in the Peace Corps, but that’s normal and we are all thinking that. I just can’t wait to start my job. So many women would benefit from better birth spacing and prenatal care. Some of the facts are staggering though, this is not related to babies but to hand washing. Most Malians believe that using soap will make you poor. But also, we eat with our right hand. The left hand is dirty because Malians also don’t use toilet paper, and instead use this tea pit thing called a sillydaga and… yes, the left hand. So the fecal oral cycle is one of my most commonly used words around here. Luckily, so far, I have gotten anyone eating with me to wash their hands. This family that I am living with has had Peace Corps trainees before so thank god, I had heard the horror stories and expected the worst. But all is well, the food is awesome and I miss fruit loops but I try not to think about it. I actually don’t miss much, and it making me re-evaluates how much I really need. Returning to America will be strange and I have heard that it is harder than coming here. I can definitely see that. Mali has the highest rate of people who apply to stay for a third year in all of the Peace Corps, so take that as you will. It is a good thing but also bad because some stay to finish projects that got stuck in red tape for too long.
Being a classic American little girl, I fulfill many stereotypes that Malians hold of us. As my host dad who had nine kids and I were setting up my mosquito net, I spotted the world’s biggest cock roach and ran out of the hut and he just started laughing at me and tried to kill it…. But it escaped into my hut. The search continues. Spiders and crickets live in my hut too, among god knows what else. I don’t turn on my head lam at night for fear of what I can’t see.
After getting dropped off the first day in my village, I walked off with my family and heard that the peace corps people were going to come around and check on me at 4 30. As time rolled by and past 4 30, I got really scared and wished that time would hurry up so I could make it to the night. The Peace Corps used to literally just drop people off in the bush. I can’t imagine how hard that would be, and no cell phones. Nowadays the Peace Corps seems almost easy compared to what it used to be. The Peace Corps also used to keep the trainees at the compound for the full 9 week training, and then drop them off at site and wish them luck... thank god for the baby steps, that makes it a lot easier for me.
But the first day was special because there was a wedding, so one of the French speaking host sons showed me around and took me to it. No, it wasn’t like wedding crashers at all. The gang of all the boys in town road their motorcycles to the next town to pick up the bride from her village a few kilometers away. The groom’s friends accompany him on this journey. She was 19, which he said was rather late. My friend is 20, and plans to have kids by 22. My other friend is 19 and plans to have kids by 21. They keep asking if I have kids. I say I want to have kids when I’m thirty or something but that I really can’t predict that. They gasp at how long away that is. It goes
Do you have kids?
No.
Why not?
I am here, want to wait, am not married, etc.
So you will soon?
No, maybe 10 years.
Are you married?
No.
Oh. But you will have kids soon?
Ok….
And this is in French- my conversation in bambara are me saying random phrases like “I have a sister” and I am 21 years old, and asking how everyone and their families are 100 times in all the different ways I can think of. Then we play the point and stare game as they wait for me to learn all the vocabulary…
But the wedding was awesome. The guys were all so excited and doing tricks and crazy stunts on their motorcycles. We also met / saw the bride from the neighbor village and learned that she was not allowed to speak the day of her wedding. So we just stood in the dark room staring at her as she rocked back and forth covered from head to toe in fabric with 2 friends. I wonder what she was thinking. The boys on the other hand were having a grand old time outside. In Mali, you gain respect by getting married and having kids. As a single person, I am told that I will not have as much respect as I would if I were like the married couple in my Peace Corps class. Then we explored the town and I asked him about polygamy and if he went to mosque, I think he is Christian. I met a million people and had to go through this whole introductory ceremony with each one, asking about family and such and it takes like a minute per person, every time I leave the compound. I heard that this is why we need bikes, to avoid these conversations every day. Then dinner time came… this was a big moment. After the horror stories and my fear of losing weight over here, I actually was pleasantly surprised and the meal was awesome. They love French fries and spaghetti. I ate in my room with the 16 year old daughter who only speaks a little French, but we are supposed to eat in silence. I find it painfully awkward and just laugh a lot at nothing. They definitely think I’m an insane, slow learning tubab. A lot gets lost in translation over here… I have probably made a fool of myself more times than i would care to count. Today some kids were eating Styrofoam so I was proud of myself when I told them not to eat it in Bambarra. Then a few hours later in class I realized that I had actually said “I don’t eat”. Goooood job.
First full day at home stay is over. Has been full of ups and downs- unfortunately characterized by whether or not I am alone. When I am with other Peace Corps Trainees, I am normally in a great mood and so proud to be here. But today while bathing in my nygen, I was just thinking, why am I here? I don’t need to be here. Will it even matter? Would I be thinking the same thing at any new job? I don’t mind the heat. I mind the bugs, but whatever. I miss my friends and I can’t wait to see them again. What a great bunch. But when I think of how I would like to make new friends, immediately the Peace Corps comes to mind to find them, before I even remember that that’s where I am… I can’t wait till Sunday. My birthday should be interesting, to see how I feel. Sometimes I feel like crying. But everyone snaps at some point, a few already have. This is such a roller coaster. I can never fall asleep.
Mali is over 90 percent Muslim, this as a blanket statement was quite alarming to me when I first connected the dots and imagined wearing the symbolic outfit and living in submission. But all these thoughts were inspired by the media and my experiences in Copenhagen and other places where the Muslim population is in the spot light. But even if southern Mali were radical and anywhere near the culture of, say, Saudi Arabia, I have the tubab card. The third sex card. As a working white American woman, I confuse the preconceived gender roles of this country and no one quite knows if Peace Corps women are women or men. Who do we eat with? Do we shake hands? Can we disagree? So far, so good though. Men also suffer an odd role. As Americans, men are used to sharing in family chores and helping with cooking and such. Standard procedure in Mali is that women do all this, and men do the fields. But the womens jobs keep them up later and rising earlier than the men. However, as a male volunteer, they have to decide if they want to let a women do all the chores for them. Their laundry, food, fetching water… sounds tempting until one thinks of who has to do these chores instead. Usually one of the younger daughters. But to do these chores yourself runs a funny dilemma too. One guy who did his own chores alone was called “she-man” for 2 years. He didn’t even know until his language skills got good enough. This is a confusing country to be even remotely feminist in, to say the least.
My birthday! It made me feel very strange, not only because I am now 22 but also because I was sitting on the floor of my hut eating breakfast alone because I don’t know how to ask why she makes me eat in my hut, and looking at all the little heads lining my window. I had heard that Peace Corps volunteers feel like they live in a fish bowl… today we spent about an hour on our new bikes trying to escape the kids. So the other 7 volunteers doing home stay in my village and I planned to meet at the school at 2, just to get away from our families and relax for a little. Speak English and make sure no one is going in sane quite yet. It was just me and another girl at 2 30, and then we here the little kids start yelling TUBABOOOO TUBABOO and pointing to the window. Never before have I felt so relieved- we see tubabs riding bikes up the main road into the village. We waved them over and it was hilarious how good it felt to see everyone. They had gotten their bikes too and were going stir crazy so they decided to ride the 10 k ish to our village. We had been planning on walking up to the other village, so together we all rode our bikes to go rescue the others. We rode our bikes through the desert and farming terrain, flush with puddles of malaria and Guardia, but we all made it minus some cuts that hopefully aren’t infected yet. We spent the ride looking for this one village and eventually found it, and then entered the ‘sandals of Mali’. It was hte nicest village ever, my village I found out has only 500 people and this one had maybe 1200. They had trees and squares and walls and it felt like heaven. We rode around and couldn’t find the tubabs, after asking and yelling and looking. Eventually we found them and all hopped on our bikes to ride away from the swarms of kids. Then we sat in hte shade of this little forest and did nothing, it was awesome. It was a great day, a great birthday, and made me really glad I didn’t go home those first few hard days. The ride home was a near death experieence, as we experienced a flat tire, but fortunately the bike and rider hitched a ride with a passing Peace Corps truck. Gooood timing. But the rest of us ended up on some sort of highway in Africa, lost and looking like fools, asking directions in bambarra… we eventually found the road that we took in last week. Never stray to the unknown path! All this was done while riding a bike in my long skirt that kept getting stuck in my brakes and showing my knees…. And if your knees show then you’re a prostitute so I had the choice of risking falling while fixing my skirt or looking like a hooker the whole ride. Just another fun day lost and bewildered in Africa. But today was soccer finals, and I managed a few sentences in bambarra too. I just say ‘I ride bike to friends town” and “I shower (sitting next to a bucket of water) myself” every few minutes.
Today I became aware of the fact that death could be a very common happening in my time here. I was caught off guard today, not mentally prepared to know that a young boy who lives in my teacher’s compound where we have class sometimes died last night. He had been sick for a while apparently, I thought he looked normal but now that I look back, he did sleep a lot. But he looked like all the other kids to me. His mother took him to the doctor in a nearby village yesterday and was told he was malnourished and had malaria, but he died that night. I am reminded again why I am here to educate women and families in ways to improve their health, I am happy to be here. Turns out, most women are not surprised when their first child dies, and some almost expect it. One in ten children die here of a variety of mostly treatable and preventable diseases. One in 7 women will die in child birth. Pregnancy is not a disease where one should be ok with death. Many practices are simple in nature but are life threatening. For example, when a child has diarrhea, mothers will stop giving it any liquids, thinking that all the liquid coming out means that the baby is too full. But really they are just causing a dehydrated baby to become more dehydrated. But we have only been here a little over a week so we have been doing mostly language training but not technical health training. I look forward to doing technical training and visiting a nearby CSCOM health center on Wednesday.
Night time is when I have time to write so forgive me if I sound nostalgic and a little unenthusiastic sometimes. Nighttime is when I am alone with my thoughts and music so my mood dips. I’m alone in my little mud hut under my mosquito net and there are kids and things running around outside my door in the compound but I closed it so that I can wear shorts that show my knees… after class we all just sit in the school for another hour or so to detox and have some tubab therapy time. Complain; tell stories… help keep the mood up. It’s also nice to know that of the 17,000 or so people that applied to be in the Peace Corps, we got in. It’s great to hear everyone’s plans and stories and experiences and why we are here. Such a great group. I am so happy to be in the Peace Corps. Even when there are puddles of rain and cow poo outside probably creeping with ring worm or something called “creeping eruptions”. Oh, the rainy season. A girl in my class got bit by a Bot Fly (kmac and friends, you better be laughing) and a few days later a bug baby larvae came out of the bite… funsies.
Interesting observations of the day: More boys speak French than girls because they are in school longer. This explains why my host bothers speak French and my sisters don’t. We also learned about marriage traditions today. To quickly explain, the families will decide at any age really. If they marry before the girl has reached puberty, then she sleeps with her mother in law until she is able to have children. But for some girls, this could be very young, and it is not unheard of to be married in Mali by 12. Of course, some families allow people to date and have a say. But traditionally, there is a process involving kola nut offerings and dowries. An average dowry is 10,000 CFA, or about 200 dollars. For divorced women it is about half. Weddings are expensive though. But once the dowry is paid and the ceremony has occurred, the girl moves into the boy’s village and just visits her old home. My host brothers and sisters are not married yet, the oldest of which is 20. But like I think I have said earlier, they want kids by 21 or 22. Family worth and respect is earned by marriage and children, so it is no wonder.
Watching soccer has been funny. Every time a game is on, we move the TV outside with the car battery and set it up on the dirt, maybe on a stool. The TV has got to be older than I am. Definitely, and it’s black and white and in French. I am always the only girl around and all the boys from the neighbors come over. It would be a hilarious picture. I can’t wait to put up pictures. But this is normal; this is life for lots of people so I can’t complain. And the food is awesome for the most part so all is well, other than the threat of scorpions in my bed. I did hear from another girl that her family ate these huge weird white bugs for lunch though…. I got lucky with host families, they treat me too well. I need to figure out how to thank them better in Bambarra.
Today was really hard. I started out on the wrong foot because my host mom brought breakfast right as I had to go to school and then my door wouldn’t lock so I was late. Class was really hard and I was just in a foul mood in general all morning and had zero tolerance for all the little kids peeking in the windows and doors. By lunch though, I realized that I was not alone. We all cracked today. Frustrated with learning a new language, today was the tipping point. We started learning technical health language in Bambarra too and it was like a whole different language on top of that. For better or for worse, Bambarra doesn’t have words for many health professions, so there isn’t as much new vocabulary as say in English. Fortunately, they say that the day that you most want to early terminate and go home is the day most worth staying for, and this turned out to be true.
We had class in the afternoon and then all decided to ride our bikes a little up the road to sit in the shade away from this little town and enjoy a moment of anonymity. We sat and talked about how hard peace corps is and how not many people realize. Not only is it a job but its living in the poorest countries in the world. It’s a trying time, training is the worst part supposedly, and it has to be. We don’t speak enough of the language to tell our host families anything and we are just tired. But, for many many reasons, I am still really happy to be here pushing myself and growing. But I think that’s because now its night and I’m in my bed looking back at how angry at the world I was this morning. But tonight was wonderful. My host mom had been making me eat alone in my room and I didn’t know how to say anything about how I was lonely and felt weird doing that. So today I said “I eat outside? You eat outside?” and she brought my food back out and I sat in a chair outside my hut. She even brought me a spoon…. I guess she knows I don’t like eating with my fingers. Then one of my host brothers joined me and we sat and ate and he said he didn’t mind that I ate with a spoon. Then a guy came and I spoke real Bambarra to him, my first real conversation. I told him the names of my family and aunts and uncles and grandpa and they thought the names were hilarious. Today was great because I feel I am learning the new language and as I was sitting outside at dinner and before, it was the first time that I was really comfortable. I just looked around, snuck a few pictures and was finally feeling like a normal person and not like the weird tubab.
Today at dinner I was talking to my host brother about polygamy. I drew a family tree of their family for home work today and just found out today, after living with them for a week, that there is a second wife living in my compound. One has 3 kids and one has 6 with the father. I asked my host brother if he thought that maybe polygamy was something of the last generation and if maybe it would die out. He said no, not with him and his village. He wants one wife at 25 ish, and then another at 35 ish. But he doesn’t want more than 2. I tried to act like this was normal. But I just said that I would get jealous. He said he will live in his family’s compound when he gets married, with his new wife and their kids. He will build a new house maybe in the corner of the compound. Wow. I didn’t know what to say at this point, there were few common threads left in the conversation and I didn’t know what to say otherwise. He is in university in Bamako for computer programming though, and this town has no electricity so I can’t figure out why he is in school and still planning on moving back here where he will be a farmer. I don’t know how to ask these questions in a culturally sensitive way, and to add to that, in French. So to fill the gap on conversation I just said that it was different. He said tubabs are weird.
Today we went to the market in class to see what it looks like after visiting the community health center. A car drove by packed full of 25 year old ish tubabs and they yelled TUBAB at us; it was the highlight of my day. I forgot how fun it is to run not other Americans in other countries, especially when chances are that they are also here doing aid and development work.
The community health center (CSCOM) was crazy. All open, no AC (not surprising in Mali), a few buildings, and still your standard outside, toilet less bathroom. There is 8 staff at this average sized CSCOM. Mostly, they see pregnant women and car accidents. The place is located on the main road of Mali that goes all the way to the coast of Cote d’Ivoire. It is a two lane super skinny road with steep shoulders on either side with 4 foot deep sewage trenches after that, so it is literally a death trap. Donkey carts, motorcycles, bikes, people, buses, trucks …. They all speed along. It was good to hear that people actually come to the place to deliver babies though. They get a free mosquito bet if they do and deliveries cost 4 dollars. They see about 60 deliveries a month, now being the high season. They also do family planning and such but most women are too ashamed to get the information there. Most women are even embarrassed to say they are pregnant until it is painfully obvious because pregnancy is caused by... sex; and that is a taboo topic here. Only 7% of women here use any kind of birth control, and I am not sure if this includes the less reliable methods. Though many women do go at night for birth control shots and such when no one can see them. There are some non profits that employ women in villages to do this. On a similar note, about 90% of women who show up there to have babies have at least one STD. They also see lots of malaria and acute respiratory infections that follow. It was typical though that all the posters given to the CSCOM by various NGOs about FGM and STDs were in French. Yes, the national language here is French, but women drop out of school so young that only men can speak french. So since the posters are directed at women, they should be in bambarra, because right now they are hanging in storage rooms. I am surprised more girls don’t die as a result of FGM here. I see kids wearing t shirts obviously given by NGOs that say ‘STOP Excision” on them, but I guess he can’t read French. The boy was wearing a t shirt that graphically stated why FGM was bad. There is a town in Mali where a volunteer lives now where that does not practice FGM. In 1986, all 20 girls who were cut on the ceremonial day died soon after and they took it as a bad sign and stopped the practice. But regardless, I think I am right when I say that 95% of Malian women have undergone this ‘procedure’.
Today was awesome because this guy who works for the Peace Corps came to visit us (and because I found out it only takes a week to mail packages to me!! Hint hint hehe CRYSTAL LIGHT AND FOOOOD) but this guy really lifted our moods. We were having a hard day in class because our brains are full, so he came to hang out with us for the afternoon. He did Peace Corps Gambia in the late 90s and since then has worked in the Peace Corps. He met his wife when she was volunteering and they now live in Bamako and live just like Americans. Future job idea? Yes. But the best part was how he talked about meeting other aid workers in Mali and meeting other returned Peace Corps volunteers in America. He says it’s so awesome to meet people in bars or on the street or around the world that have also done Peace Corps. He also said that there is a Marine Corps house in Bamako that is really fun to hang out at occasionally. But there are so many people to meet now that I’m in Peace Corps! And they can speak their African dialect in America and no one knows what they are saying… I can’t wait to do that. Then later this afternoon, we were hanging out at my friend’s house because her host mom makes peanut butter. We looked up and saw tubabs everywhere, turns out that the town below us was going stir crazy do that rode the 20 minutes through the bush to visit for a little. It was awesome; it’s such a cool group and feels awesome to see everyone.
Today during class before he came to visit I was staring out the window, brain dead, and saw this old guy push this woman to the ground behind their house and start beating her with his fists from behind on her head and face. After a few minutes she walked away in silence and he was yelling at her in bambarra. It was really scary and sad and weird how helpless we were to stop the situation or prevent it from occurring again. Turns out it was my friends host dad so now she feels really odd when she sees him. My host dad is awesome, really nice and funny and he brings me cold sodas. He just has an overall cute, gentile personality. He plays with his babies and seems like a good guy but I guess you never know. She said her host dad was nothing but nice to her too.
But nowww, I am back at Tubaniso! Now this feels like the most luxurious place ever. At ‘home’, friends, ‘food’, FORKS, sharing ridiculous stories about being fed fried bugs and being made to take off our clothes for laundry day. Sanity. And some of us get packages here… hint hint hint hehheeh SO HUNGRYYY. But this is Africa after all… oh boyyyyy!
