Ex-pat patriotism and one big elephant

Wow, the last couple of days have been remarkable, in both good and bad ways. Let’s rewind to Thursday night. In the middle of the night, once again, I awoke in my Bug Hut to a terrible wind. I seemed to be the only one awake at the time, and wasn’t sure what to do, considering I didn’t have the keys to the house. Luckily, the barrage of dusty wind woke up the others and we hustled the tents back into the house before anyone was blown away or electrocuted.

We woke up in the morning with a muddy courtyard, a clear indication of rain later in the night. It was the morning of the 4th, which meant that the moment of sheep execution had arrived. I didn’t particularly want to watch the ram get slaughtered in our own courtyard, but I felt pressure to.

They had hired a man to do the slaughtering and preparing. In accordance with Islamic law, the ram was restrained and laid down on its side facing east towards Mecca. Then before my eyes, the man slit its throat and all of its blood drained into a hole they had dug. It was pretty gross. I will spare the details, but the carcass was skinned and hung from our tree, where all of the de-organing happened. I unfortunately have some pictures, which I won’t share with you.

Around 10 in the morning, I was called outside, because the first of our meat delicacies were cooked and ready. Round one happened to be various organs, maybe the liver and heart, but I’m still not sure. Minkailou forced me to try it, even though I wanted to run away screaming. Truth be told, it didn’t taste half bad, but I couldn’t get the image of our poor ram’s internal organs out of my head, so that tainted the flavor a bit.

A little while later, Abbie and I headed out to the internet. I didn’t really need to go, but I went anyway to try and get my PC to work with their cable (successful mission). However, Abbie’s computer was being slow, compounded by the slow speed of the internet, and we didn’t end up getting out of there until lunch time. At that point, both Abbie and I were stressed out—it was extremely humid from all of the rain, the internet was slow, and we felt a million miles from home.

When I got back to the house, the guests for the party later had already started to show up. There was some man in the courtyard who tried to talk to me in Tommo-So. I didn’t understand what he was saying, and he had the If-I-Say-It-A-Thousand-Times-She’ll-Understand syndrome, and I just was not in the mood for it. Eventually I left and went into the house until I was called for lunch. I talked to Kirill over the salad for a while, and then when it came time for the main course, I went out into the courtyard, since I’ve started eating with my hand communally. However, Seydou gave me a bowl that day and told me to go sit on the bed, since there weren’t enough chairs. That made me mad—we already have seven people living here, plus the guests, and I can’t even eat with our own people? So I took my bowl of rice and went into the house to eat alone.

Of course, being shunned from the meal did nothing to help my feeling of homesickness. Then to make matters worse, as I always do, I take the hot pepper in the sauce and chop it up in my food, but the rice was already really spicy and the pepper was particularly hot, so lunch was physically painful to eat. And then my mango slices, which Seydou brought to me in my solitary confinement (totally oblivious as to why I was upset), tasted like rotten buttered popcorn Jelly Belly beans. No good at all. Abbie came in to check on me and we bitched for a while about everything that was bothering us, which relieved some of the stress.

Then it was time to get ready to party. We changed into our new clothes and joined the crowd in the courtyard. People seemed to really like seeing us dressed up a la Africaine, which was fun. American flag bandanas and a huge American flag had materialized out of nowhere. Matching them was Jeff’s foot-long Uncle Sam hat that he had pulled out.

As if the courtyard party weren’t surreal enough, Jeff has a tradition of having a parade through the market. Us Toobobs and several Malians set off in a line, the Malians beating water jugs as drums and chanting “Amerique”. I still am not sure whether it was the highest state of humiliation or hilarious. Probably both.

With the parade over, we returned for hundreds of pictures of every combination of people at the house. By then, a huge crowd of children had gathered, and some people, including Kirill, had started drumming on the water jugs. A couple kids came out and danced, which was cute (or possibly innocently obscene, in the case of one little girl). Ramata came and hung out for a while, too. The bucket o’ grilled ram was brought and we feasted on meat in the hanger. As cute as the ram was, I have to admit, the meat was very good.

That pretty much takes care of the 4th of July. Yesterday, we woke up at the crack of dawn (even earlier than usual, so pre-crack of dawn) so we could get ready to leave to see the elephants. We had hired the Land Cruiser again, the same guy who took me to Tongo-Tongo, since he is a very good driver. Somehow we managed to fit all eight of us in there, including the driver: 3 in the front, 3 in the back, and Abbie and I in the trunk. I personally think we got the best seats; we had a mattress back there and pillows and got to watch everything unfold behind us as we drove out into the bush.

And drive into the bush we did. We basically went off-roading, bumping over holes and ledges and splashing through rain-filled ponds. When we came across a village, we would stop and inquire as to whether the elephants had been seen lately. In that manner, we got steered here and there, but no elephants were to be found. I took a couple of naps in the back—there was the spare tire under the mattress, so Abbie was on top of that and I was in a Laura-sized nook between it and the window, perfect for napping. We drove around aimlessly until we stopped for a picnic lunch at 2 or 3. Everyone else ate leftover ram-meat, but I opted out, considering it had just been sitting in an unrefrigerated bucket since slaughter. Rather, I had bought some Laughing Cow cheese and attempted to remind my stomach what lactose is.

We hit the road again after lunch. All throughout the day, we passed a lot of villages of the nomadic Fulani people. They are lighter-skinned than the Dogon are typically nomadic herders rather than sedentary farmers. Eventually, it seems, one of the villages steered us toward the town of Boni, and there we picked up a guide who knew where we were going.

We drove a ways out of Boni and ran into a couple of hunters, who told us that there were four elephants in the vicinity. We picked one of them up too (bringing our total of people in the 4x4 to 10, two on the roof) and went out to find these alleged elephants. Not long after, we heard cries of “Niwa! Niwa!” (elephant in Fulfulde) from the roof. We stopped the car and sure enough, there was a huge elephant half-concealed in the trees in the distance. Following the lead of the hunter, we slowly and quietly approached the elephant, so as not to startle it. It was just in a thicket, eating some leaves, busy being huge and amazing. It knew we were there, and had an eye on us, but we didn’t seem to bother it too much. In the end, I got about 20 yards away, maybe less. It was completely magical. All of the sweat, bumps, time, and motion sickness of the hours before were made worth it by being there in the thicket with a real live wild elephant.

We stayed around it for maybe twenty minutes, then left it in peace and drove home.

People are moving back out today--Abbie and Minkailou left for Bunu in the morning and Seydou will be spending a few days at his village in Anda before coming back to accompany me to Tongo-Tongo. Kirill heads back tomorrow and we won't see him until the conference in Leiden, since he's going home to Russia for a month. Back to a little more of a quiet house...