Farewell

I have been home for five days now. It is alarming how quickly a year's worth of Mali can recede in such a short time; it already feels like a dream. I'm fighting to hold onto the experience through looking at pictures and putting up videos, but it still fades.

And so this shall be my last post to Pangolin Watch, over a year from the first. Thank you to all of you who avidly followed my adventures and to those of you who even checked in from time to time. It gave me a lot of courage in Mali knowing that there were people back home behind me. I hope this blog was as enjoyable to read as it was for me to write, seeing as it constitutes my journals for the year. So thanks for coming along on the voyage with me.

We had no pangolin sightings, unfortunately, but perhaps on the next adventure? Malaysia? We shall see.

Home at last

Well, that's it. I'm back in the US. It still is kind of hard to believe, since it just feels so normal, as if I hit the pause button on my life, went to Africa for a year, then came back and just resumed. Mali already feels like a world away, and yet I was there no more than 48 hours ago. It will take a little while to reconcile these two lives, I feel.

The trip went smoothly. Before going to the airport, I met Spencer and Jaimie at a wonderful restaurant right in the neighborhood of SIL called African Foods. Pretty generic name. But it was the best service I've gotten anywhere in Mali, and possibly some of the best, well, African food. I got a Cameroonian sauce of spinach and peanuts with plantains, along with my final Castel beer, which the waiter had to get next door since theirs wasn't cold. Just as I was done eating, I got a call on my cell phone from the embassy expeditor, who evidently had come to SIL to pick me up. Luckily, I had all my baggage with me, so the waiter just gave him directions and he picked me up directly from the restaurant.

Embassy expeditor is really an apt name. They do indeed expedite you through the airport process like some VIP, whisking you past authorities before depositing you in front of bag screening, the final step before the waiting room. I got a little teary sitting waiting for the plane. I mean, that was really it, it was over. But I felt giddy walking up the steps to the airplane. This was the longest time I'd gone without flying in years.

I watched the lights of Bamako shrink away as we took off. On the little flight locator map on the TV screen, I located my mountain by Douentza and watched as our digital plane glided past. Then I slept.

When I woke up, we were high above a glowing metropolis, somewhere in Spain, as my TV informed me. It was huge. We landed in Paris at dawn. Somehow in five hours' time, the Niger River had become the Seine.

I spent a relatively uneventful layover in Paris. I had my first little taste of culture shock, as I greeted the guy checking passports and asked how he was doing, in good Malian fashion, and he kind of laughed at me. I forgot that we don't really do greetings here. I did end up going through security and to the wrong set of gates, at one point. When we got in, the flight information for the Atlanta flight said terminal E only, no gate, so I randomly picked one of the two options and of course picked the wrong one, as I saw as soon as I got through security. No matter, I had time. The other unfortunate thing about Paris (and the US, I presume) is that you cannot exchange CFA at their currency exchange. Ridiculous! Now I have $60 worth of CFA just sitting around, being a souvenir. But my credit card hadn't been cancelled, so I got a pain au chocolat and some Orangina and celebrated the First World (even though you can find both of those things in Bamako).

They did security checks on our passports. The guy checking mine tried to swipe it, but lo and behold, it wouldn't swipe. He asked me if I'd put it through the washing machine. "No, just a bad bus ride in Mali."

The Atlanta flight was long, some 9 hours, and we didn't have individual TV screens. The main cabin screen played three movies, all of which I watched without sound (as I am wont to do), as well as several TV shows. I napped on my tray table some and continued to plow through Bill Bryson (which I finished on the Minneapolis flight). I was surrounded by my kinsmen at last. Americans are so boisterous. We're self-assured, we talk to strangers, and we just have a vibe about us that screams AMERICA. It's not a bad thing. It's just our culture, and it was funny to be confronted with it again.

It was a quick layover in Atlanta, just enough time to get through customs, recheck my bag, and get on the next flight. I was feeling a bit like a zombie at that point, but at least I was a homeward-bound zombie. At least it was a quick flight--only two hours; after the preceding 14-15 hours of flight, I was ready to be done.

Flying into Minnesota was a strange experience, not the least of which because it was unusually hazy. Hell, I could've been in Douentza for how much dust was in the air! It was due to unusual winds, winds that made landing a hair-raising experience. Once safely on the ground, I felt my excitement rise. I was really home. My parents were waiting at the bottom of the escalator to baggage claim, and oh, was it good to see them. I instantly felt more awake as we talked face to face for the first time in nearly 8 months.

We got some Mexican food for dinner (carnitas... pork... yes) and I unpacked some. Some things were broken in my luggage, but nothing irreparably. I skyped with Kevin on a real internet connection for a little bit then went to bed around 8:30 or 9. Jet lag so far hasn't been too bad. Yes, I got up at 6:45, which is unusual for me, but not totally unusual. I have a haircut today (much needed) and a dentist appointment tomorrow (not much wanted, but much needed). Time to start looking and feeling American again.

I will update once or twice more as I report on the adjustment process, but my friends, we are in the final stages of Pangolin Watch.

Saying my goodbyes to Mali

I’m sitting here watching the last bit of Malian light that I will see fade away. It’s incredibly surreal. It doesn’t feel real at all. Various strands of my life are coming together and blending as I prepare to close this chapter. Here I am, listening to classical Indian music, thinking about taking tabla lessons in Los Angeles while sitting in an apartment in the middle of Africa waiting for a flight through France to Minnesota. It’s just too much change to internalize right now.

But I successfully checked my baggage this morning. I showed up outside of the Air France office about five minutes before they opened at 10AM; mine was the first baggage checked. I am happy to report that I didn’t have any excess luggage fees or anything to pay and that I received my boarding passes without a hitch (except for the final leg to Minneapolis, but I’ll figure that out when the time comes). Afterwards, I went to the embassy one last time to cash a check (it’s always good to have an emergency reserve on you) and to watch Spencer’s presentation. He gave a nice presentation about his music research, including a screening of a video he shot to a Malian rap song about pollution and littering. It was pretty great.

Other than that, I’ve just been hanging out, playing free trials of computer games and reading my book. Unfortunately my internet has gone down at the time of writing this, but hopefully it’ll be back up so I can post it before I leave for the airport around 9PM. If you end up reading this Tuesday evening in America, it worked.

My Mali reading list

I've compiled a list of books that I'm currently reading, read, or started to read. I may have forgotten books somewhere in there, but here's the bulk of it:

Currently reading:
-A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

Books I’ve read this year:
-To Timbuktu, Mark Jenkins
-The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
-The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
-Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris
-The 5 People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
-The Shack, William Young
-Keeping the Faith, Jodi Picoult
-Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards
-Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
-Demian, Herman Hesse
-The General and His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter
-Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
-Making of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman
-Monique and the Mango Rains, Kris Holloway
-Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
-Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton
-Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen

Books I started but didn’t finish, with comments:
-Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter(about halfway through, it got into way too much computer science)
-Stones for Ibarra, Harriet Doerr (good writing, but I didn’t care about the characters)
-People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn (simply got interested in other books)
-Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse (had high hopes, but too dense to penetrate)

It was certainly nice having all of this time to do pleasure reading, something I had been seriously behind on for many years.

Les dimanches à Bamako

Today was a remarkably quiet day in a normally bustling city. I slept in until 11:00AM after an impromptu night of swimming at Matt's place. Immediately, I called Dave to see if we could arrange lunch. He said he and Antony were going out to Adonis, so I got dressed and hailed a cab. The cab driver had no idea where he was going and tried to charge me extra after we drove around for fifteen minutes looking for the restaurant; I staunchly refused. There was hardly anyone in the streets and very few cars on the bridges. I guess Sunday is truly a day of rest. Or rather, as blind musical duo Amadou and Mariam put it, "Les dimanches à Bamako, c'est le jour de mariage" (Sundays in Bamako, it's the day of marriages). I have probably spotted three marriages today.

I had an egg roll and a soda at Adonis before we went to the Campagnard (where I sat for 5 hours using the internet back in February) to drink more soda in their sweet, sweet air-conditioning. Eventually we parted ways, and I got into an even nicer and quieter taxi that took me back towards Badalabougou.

I'm coming to like Bamako. It's a haphazard city, like something thrown together from whatever the Creator had lying around at the time. Rubble heaps? Sure. Fruit stands with grapes? Why not. A big white stallion tied to the side of the road? Naturally. There are so many colors, so many smells (not all of them good), music blaring from taxis passing in a doppler blur, big saucy ladies perched on top of Chinese mopeds, and no shortage of runty goats pillaging trash piles or even a mango seller's table, if they aren't watching.

I came back to SIL and heated up the rest of my cabbage rolls for Lunch Round 2. The rest of the afternoon was spent reading, doing laundry, surfing the internet, and cat-napping in the humidity.

Two days left.

Living the nightlife

Last night, I was literally out until dawn. I wasn't even totally committed to going out at all, but at 10PM when Spencer said he was going to join some friends at a bar across town, I let myself be convinced to come along, so long as he came to pick me up in his taxi. When we got to the bar, called the Flamboyant, we found that there was to be a musical act that night. It started out with a couple of drummers, a terrible synthesizer playing recorded xylophone songs, and a bored-looking guitarist twanging out riffs with too much distortion. Paul and Marie were there, as well as people I didn't know: Jamie, a young woman working on a poli sci dissertation, Hillary, who teaches at a Christian school, Jacob and Owen, a couple pilots for a gold mine, and Matt, a teacher at the American school. Eventually some women started singing and dancing around, which made the music slightly more interesting, but not too much. Here is a sample:



After a while of that, people decided to move to a different bar, so we packed up in Owen's Jeep and went to a place called the Kora, which had pretty delicious wood-fired pizza. Nothing like pizza at 2:30 in the morning. Owen was ready to go home at that point, and I could have myself, but other people were scheming up plans to go to No Stress, the club Kevin and I went to on New Year's Eve. I was on the fence, but allowed myself to be dragged along. After all, it is my last weekend in Mali. The club was pretty fun, when they played music I knew. I did a lot of dancing and others drank from a bottle of whisky, but whisky at 3 in the morning sounded like the grossest thing I could think of. So I just danced. We stayed there almost until it closed; when we went downstairs at 5:30 to go home, the sun was rising. I haven't stayed out that late in a very very long time, but I'm pretty glad I did. I had a good time.

I came back to SIL and crashed until 12:30, at which point I ate the rest of my peanut sauce for lunch, checked my e-mail, then went back to bed. Tonight it was cabbage rolls stuffed with curried ground beef (leftover stuffing from the meat pies), and I also made a big batch of hibiscus juice (which is really more like tea, since you boil the flowers). (Pictures of this latest culinary endeavor have been added to the last photo album.) Some Peace Corps people are going out tonight, but I just want to stay in and read my book. Now that the Satanic Verses is done, it's on to a second reading of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I decided tonight that I want to be Bill Bryson when I grow up.

Here is another video of Douentza as well, views down the main road into town:

Bamako photos

I will try to update this photo album as I get more pictures, so check back from time to time:

Pre-Ameriki Bamako

Bamako Zoo

Ever since the departure of Jeff and Abbie, I have basically been laying low, reading (almost done with Satanic Verses), surfing the web, and cooking. Today, however, in an effort to not go completely stir crazy, I went out to lunch with my friend Spencer. We hit up the Broadway Café, where I had one of their delicious cheeseburgers and a piña colada. Afterwards, we decided to brave the zoo.

We both expected the worst. I mean, Mali can't get a lot of its human life together, so how good could the zoo possibly be? While there were certainly depressing aspects, it wasn't as bad as we anticipated. First, it only cost 50 CFA to get in (about 10 cents). For that price, we weren't expecting much. But they had some nice enclosures with gazelles, artificial streams, storks, etc. There were also dismal cages containing baboons with hideously deformed rear ends or lone chimpanzees breaking your heart with their stares. There were cages of lions and hyenas, which are scarier in real life than you think they should be; I wouldn't want to meet a pack of them in the wild. One of the scariest parts of the zoo, however, was their serpent building, containing aquariums with vipers and pythons and other deadly snakes. I just don't trust Malian cages. We high-tailed it out of there pretty quickly.

As promised, there was indeed a broken tank containing a rotting manatee carcass. It was comically horrifying. I mean, why was it in such a tiny tank to begin with? Was it ever alive in there? Why didn't they dispose of the carcass? All questions calling for answers. But among the cooler animals were a panther, some ostriches, and the cutest little baby elephant, sadly without a mother.

We more or less enjoyed our visit, though, then went to the café at the national museum to get some sodas and hibiscus juice to cool off. Now I am back in my SIL purdah, back to the internet and my book. Not too shabby.

Pictures of the zoo trip shortly.

Rebirth in the city

Perhaps the recent rains were the catalyst, or perhaps some subtle cue from the shifting light, but the last twenty-four hours have seen the explosion of some delicate-winged species of insect. They hang in the air like cottonwood seeds, drifting harmlessly past as you walk. For others, their appearance is a celebration. Orange-headed lizards leap into the air to snatch them in their jaws; barefoot children swat at them with an old piece of cardboard; adolescent chickens peck at their fallen bodies. Their existence will undoubtedly be short. Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? Long enough to lay the foundations for next year's rebirth. Then their wings will blanket the ground with a petal-like mosaic.

These insects are certainly more pleasant than some of the other bursts Mali's summer has to offer. Blister beetles waiting to excrete acid onto exposed skin, giant grasshoppers ramming into you as they hurl themselves towards the light, water scorpions just looking appalling (more like cockroaches)... But I will miss all of those. Instead, I just get the nymph-like insects going through their yearly incarnation.

Here's another video from Douentza, more of the market:

La vie bamakoise

First off, here's a video I took in the streets of Douentza driving out of my house:


Minkailou indeed arrived Sunday night, at around 1:30 in the morning. I had dozed off and felt like a zombie when he got in, but he got in safe and with my suitcase, so that's what matters.

The next morning, we went to the grocery store, where I stocked up on a week's worth of groceries: ground beef (which has unfortunately already spoiled), eggs, cereal, beans, flour, milk, yogurt, etc. Then we got produce at a little stand outside: potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, onions, bananas... I love Bamako. When we got back to SIL, he took me to the little boutique around the corner, where there is another woman who sells produce. I finished my kitchen stock-up there with lettuce, carrots, peanut butter, garlic and ginger. And then the boutique owners speak Fulfulde, so it's like I never left Douentza!

That afternoon, I went to the embassy to try and use their computer to insert some final fonts into my slideshow. When I got out of the taxi, I realized in horror that I'd forgotten my passport. I called the Public Affairs Officer, and she said I could get in with my driver's license, which (thankfully) I could. Unfortunately, after a lot of hanging out with Casimir, a Dogon who works at the embassy, and insulting a Songhay guy (since that's what Dogons do), it turned out that there wasn't any computer I could use. Fail. I went back empty-handed, but that's all right.

To feel productive, I made... meat pies! I saw the recipe in my Mali cookbook and felt the need to try it out. I amended the filling recipe a bit--curry ground beef with potatoes instead of beef and greens--but otherwise stayed true. Much to my disappointment, my yeast was dead, which I didn't find out until I'd made my dough and it didn't rise. But I folded them up and backed them anyway, like little curried beef-filled calzones. They looked beautiful and were quite delicious.

Around 8, Minkailou and I headed to the airport to meet Jeff. It had started to rain a little, and we had to wait for an hour in the rain for Jeff to get his bags and get out of the airport. It was good to see him, but strange as well, since it brought back a lot of memories from the summer. We went back to SIL and hung out for a little while before going to Amandine, Jeff's usual haunt, to stay awake until Abbie got in.

He asked if I was planning on coming back to Mali, and I said probably someday, but I wasn't about to make any plans before I saw where grad school took me. He seemed satisfied with that.

At 2AM, we got back into the taxi and headed back to the airport where we waited another hour for Abbie to get in. I was exhausted by then, having not slept too well the night before, and napped on the waiting room chairs for a bit. Abbie eventually got in just fine, and it was so nice to see her. She really is my "grande soeur". We chatted non-stop all the way back and stayed up until after 4AM chatting some more. Eventually, we both had to hit the hay, since my presentation at the embassy was the next morning.

9AM came early, and I rolled groggily out from under my mosquito net to prepare for the talk. I called Stephanie (the PAO) to make sure Abbie and Jeff could get into my talk, which she arranged. I headed over there myself around 11, wearing the same Dogon indigos that I wore to my presentation in Leiden back in August. Casimir and the Dogon tech guy, Timothé, met me and helped me set up my PowerPoint. Everything came through just fine.

People started to trickle in somewhere before noon. It was a pretty decent showing. The American ambassador even came! The PAO honored Jeff with an introduction as well and I launched into my talk, which had three goals. 1) Introduce the audience to what it is that you actually do when documenting a language, i.e., how do you learn a language for which no materials exist? 2) Introduce our Dogon Languages Project and what we're all about. 3) Talk about aspects of the culture I learned about through doing this work. People responded really well, both during my talk and during the question period afterwards. I felt really positive about it. Jeff even complimented me much later that night (I thought he never would).

We ate at the embassy (bacon cheeseburger) with my Fulbright friend Spencer, who had come to see my talk. Afterwards, we went back to SIL, where Abbie and I caught up and talked until we both crashed for naps. That evening, I worked through some receipts with Jeff, then we braved the then near-torrential downpour to get to Amandine for dinner. Abbie and I split an avocado salad, then I had Nile perch with bananas and broiled tomatoes. Yum. Not to mention another mango milkshake.

This morning, Abbie and I went out to Broadway Cafe to have brunch with Paul, another Fulbright that Abbie went to school with and had Bambara class with. It was fun, and I stuffed myself full of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. When we got back, it was time for her and Jeff to hit the road. She wanted to stay another day, but Jeff was weird about it and wouldn't let her. I saw them off to the bus station, then headed back. Jeff was uncharacteristically complimentary, telling me I had done terrific work this year. It made me feel really good.

I've been on a mission to make banana bread the last few days, but I can't get my hands on baking soda. Small stores here have no idea what it is, the pharmacy was out of it, and the big grocery was closed. I might try to go to another pharmacy later in the afternoon or to the grocery store. I just have all of these overripe bananas and nothing to do with them.

Three new photo albums

Here we are:

Solar panel installation

Final Douentza-area photos

Going away party

Coming soon: videos of Douentza and around.

Goodbye, Douentza

I am on my way home. I have already left Douentza, spent a night in Sevare, and made it to Bamako.

My party on Friday went well. A lot of people showed up, a lot of whom I didn’t even really know. But Fatimata was one of the first to get there and the last to leave, along with the two bartenders from the Tango, my tailor, the neighbor kid Hamidou, his dad, and my Peace Corps friends who were in town (Dave, Phil, Ashley). We ate goat and drank sodas at around 4:30, and just hung out in my courtyard listening to music, taking pictures and talking. I was quite pleased (and the goat was delicious).

Later that night, Oumar and Ashley and I went to the Tango for one last time. Dave and Phil were supposed to come, but they were “too tired”. Lame. I helped Minkailou import his pictures into what’s now his computer (and not mine), then went to bed.

I didn’t sleep very well. It was sort of the Christmas Eve syndrome—too excited to sleep well. I spent the morning packing and sweeping out the AC room. Ashley came over to help me, then around 10 am, we got ready to walk to the freeway to meet our transportation. I had to say goodbye to Ramata then, which was pretty sad. I wanted to just envelop her in a huge hug, but it’s not totally Malian. We held hands and grasped each other’s shoulders, and I think she was as sad as I was.

Hamidou walked with Ashley and I to the freeway, carrying my bag, as is respectful for someone who is leaving that you like a lot. Oumar came with my big suitcase on the moto after us. We ended up getting to the freeway much earlier than need be, but that’s okay. I was getting antsy sitting at home. About an hour later, the Peace Corps 4x4 drove up and we loaded our stuff. Ashley didn’t go—she was just saying hi to someone passing through in the car—but Dave and Phil went. I was saddest about saying goodbye to Oumar, since he was probably my best Malian friend here. You could tell he was really upset but couldn’t show his feelings.

And with that, we pulled out of Douentza. I just watched the well-known scenery slide by me, disappearing into the distance. The only time I cried was walking down my street leaving my house. The feelings are just too mixed. And I don’t think the reality of it has hit me yet.

The car ride was good. It was a little cramped, but much faster and much more pleasant than any Malian bus could be. When we got into Sevare, we went out and got lunch (yassa rice—rice with a delicious onion sauce) at a little place called Chez Damou. Afterwards, some people went to the bar, and I went and checked into the Mankante where I stayed last night.

This morning, I got up at 6 am and ate my delicious Mankante breakfast. Just as I was packing up, Phil called me to make sure I was on my way to the burea, since the bus was about to leave. I hustled over there (it’s just around the corner), and in the process accidentally took my room key with me. Oh well, I’ll send it back up with some PCV.

It turns out that in addition to the minibus, the 4x4 from the day before was also going down to Bamako. And we didn’t have that many people. This meant that there were five of us in a minibus meant to hold twenty, so we each had a row to ourselves. It was by far the best transportation experience I’ve had in Africa. I napped, listened to music, chatted with the volunteers, and watched Mali roll by. We stopped in San to get gas and then in Segou for lunch, finally arriving in Bamako around 4 pm.

As soon as my baggage got down, I hailed a cab and came to the SIL guesthouse. They gave me a room on the third floor, so I had to haul all of my luggage up the three flights of stairs. Not so great. Since it’s the weekend, the hostess’s office is empty, so I couldn’t ask for an internet access card. But I am crafty, and here I am on the internet now. First, I saw a young woman coming out of the apartment next door and I asked if I could borrow her access card, which she let me do. She’s an American who’s been here working with SIL for about three months. Perhaps we’ll chat more later.

I took my prize back to my apartment, ready for some quality internet time, only to find that there was no Ethernet cable. I gave up my internet dreams for a while and headed out for dinner at Amandine’s. When I was on my way out of the compound, I heard a woman greet the SIL guard in Tommo-So, of all things! I started talking to her in Tommo-So (much to her surprise and joy) and we chatted all the way until I found a cab. I think she might come by tomorrow and we might chat some more. Go figure that I come to Bamako, the city where I feel linguistically useless (since I don’t speak Bambara) and then I find not only a Dogon speaker, but a Tommo-So speaker. Who knew TS was such a useful language.

I had a mango smoothie and pizza for dinner, half of which I brought back for lunch tomorrow. I also brought back a couple croissants for the morning and an apple tart for later this evening. Mm mm, civilization tastes good.

Minkailou is coming in tonight (hopefully) with my other suitcase. That was when I realized that SIL had also left his and Jeff’s keys out, so I figured it was only questionably dishonest to take them and get the Ethernet cable from their apartment, which I did, and now I’m in business. Here commences my ten days of waiting until I come home. I will probably get pretty bored, but oh well, I can wait it out, since the light at the end of the tunnel is growing ever brighter.

Happy mother’s day!

Last full day in Douentza

Today is officially my last day at the Douentza internet. After hundreds of times of coming here, it’s now over. I will miss it nostalgically, but not technologically. I am certainly ready to move onto the greener pastures of Sevare, then Bamako, then the US.

We slaughtered my goat this morning. I was awoken at 7:30am, first by the sounds of “toobob, ca va?” out in the street, announcing the arrival of one of my friends, then by pounding on my door. When I opened it blearily, I was met first thing by the sight of goat carcass. Always a good way to start the day.

Fatimata came over to get the hide (she’s going to make a pillow out of it), and her mother was there too. I’m confused, however, because this was a different old lady than the one I met in Petaka. Perhaps it’s her mother-in-law? She was a wrinkly old woman with light skin and twinkling eyes. She gave me a bowl of eggs and a ring.

I gave Fatimata her presents: my bottle of ibuprofen, a necklace of mine, and 2000 CFA. I think she was quite pleased with all of it. They stayed until the liver was done being grilled, ate a few pieces, then went on their way.

Afterwards, Phil (the mystery toobob from earlier) and I packed the kitties into a basket, covered it with a sheet, and set out through the market to deliver them to Ashley. Poor things, they were so scared, trying to break out through the sheet. It was a stressful walk. When we got to Ashley’s, we let them out, and they looked around themselves in confusion. “Wait, this isn’t our house.” Well, soon enough it will be. I hope they’ll be okay.

Down to the final things to do—clear out the files on this computer so I can leave it for Jeff, give the rest of my presents, have a party. I think that’s about it. Oh, and clandestinely film the streets of Douentza. That’s also on the agenda. It’s off to Sevare tomorrow!

Mud puddles

Not much new to report, except that I only have 2 more days in Douentza! It was super hot yesterday, and then the skies opened up and it poured. It really was no relief—it just made it incredibly humid out and turned the streets into muddy messes. I spent all evening sitting in my room with the AC on reading the Satanic Verses.

I’ve been hanging out with Phil all morning. We got the pharmacy supplies for Tongo-Tongo’s pharmacy this morning, which concludes my school improvement mission. Again, thank you to everyone who supported that. I’ll get pictures up shortly.

Tonight Phil and I are going to the Norwegian missionaries’ house to watch their Fulani version of the Good Samaritan movie. It should be fun to see, since I read the screenplay. Besides, maybe they’ll feed us brownies. I can only hope.

I’ll write a final blog entry from Douentza internet tomorrow. Hard to believe.

Fiesta time

Our Cinco de Mayo party yesterday was a success. I cut up half of the sheep rump and cooked it up with peppers and onions to make fajita meat, and on top of that, we got some ground beef and made taco meat as well. Susan, Ashley and Phil made fresh tortillas, Dave prepared some Cajun style rice and beans, and I refried some additional beans to complete our Mexican smorgasbord. Oumar and Ely came over and got to taste Mexican food for the first time. They were quite pleased. We all ate our fill, drank some beers, and sat in the cement and stone “hot tub” at the Peace Corps house that they filled up with jugs of water. Altogether, it was a fun day of hanging out and eating good non-Malian food.

This morning I had a grilled mutton chop for breakfast; this is the sheep that keeps on giving. I’ve been starting to pack all morning. It’s starting to hit me that I’m really going home. I’m 90% glad about that, but every now and then I feel a twinge of sadness, mainly about leaving Ramata and Oumar, my closest friends here.

Steve and Ely left for Sangha before I got up this morning, and Minkailou accompanied them, so the house is rather empty. It feels like the end is approaching.

Cinco de Mayo

Happy Cinco de Mayo. We’re having a party at the Peace Corps house later to celebrate. I made a batch of regular and mango salsa yesterday, and we have the rump left over from our sheep slaughter that we’ll grill/make fajitas with. But about the sheep slaughter.

Steve decided that he didn’t want to pay for his ram’s upkeep anymore while he was gone, so we should just slaughter it. The butcher came over in the morning, but I didn’t particularly want to start my day with blood and gore, so I just stayed in bed. After the carcass was taken away, I came out and Oumar was grilling the liver over some coals. He offered me some, but I declined. While I was making my salsa, the severed head was lying in the hanger looking at me. Creepy. But then Oumar took that away and grilled THAT over a fire. They all assure me that it’s delicious for breakfast. I have my reservations.

Susan and Rabayah got into town on Sunday evening, so they came over with Ashley in the afternoon yesterday and hung out while I made salsa. We invited them over for our feast later and went about our days.

The sheep arrived, along with all of our friends (Susan, Rabayah, Ashley, Dan, Dave, Phil, and Maia) that evening, and we feasted. It was delicious, as expected, especially the crispy outside parts. They stayed over drinking beers and listening to music until probably 10:30. The funniest part of the night was when this hell creature came tearing through our courtyard from inside of the house. It turned out to be Sami, who’d gotten a black plastic bag stuck on her like a cape, which she was trying desperately to run away from. She ran two or three extremely fast laps before diving into a room and hiding behind a bowl. I had to drag her out and get her unstuck, but she had given herself quite a scare (and us quite a laugh).

I found out for sure that I can get Peace Corps transport down to Bamako. Now I’ll be leaving Douentza on Saturday afternoon to go to Sevare, then we’ll leave Sevare early Sunday morning. I’m totally relieved. Not only do I not have to get on a terrible Malian bus, but I also get to travel with my friends. I got really lucky.

T – 4 days, about.

Santa Claus is coming to town

Yesterday was my last trip to the village, and it was full of mixed emotions.

We loaded up the car with all of our gear and all of our people (me, Minkailou, Oumar, Ramata, the school director, and the two electricians) and hit the road at around 7am. It was fun getting to drive that road one last time, since it was the road that originally led me to the village. We made good time getting there—only about two hours.

First thing, we went to the school and dropped off all of the supplies and the electricians so they could start working. Then we drove over to my house and dropped off all of the clothes and toys and other goods there. After that all got settled and I greeted some people, we walked back over to the school to supervise the installation.

The electricians worked swiftly and surely, filling up the battery with 12 bottles of acid (which children then washed out in a bucket of water… I sincerely hope no one will drink from those later), setting up the panels to charge, tacking up wires, etc. I walked around and filmed a bit as they worked and generally just observed.

Around noon, I wanted to go back over to the village itself and start looking through my stuff, but the school director told me to wait and eat, which I did, despite not feeling particularly well. Afterwards, Oumar and I went over and talked to Ramata, explaining to her how we wanted the chief to help us distribute the goods. I wanted to start going through things, but Oumar said that the installation was almost done and that we should go back to see the end of it. We trudged back over and waited maybe another two hours for the panels to be hoisted onto the roof and secured in place. It was certainly a rewarding moment when we hit the light switches and the lights came on: one fluorescent light in the director’s office, two in a big classroom, and one on the outside veranda. Now the students and teachers of Tongo-Tongo have a place to study at night, and the village as a whole has a place to hold meetings or training sessions at night without being in near darkness. Thank you so much to everyone who helped make that a reality.

When that was done, it was nearly 3 o’ clock, so I really needed to get back to the village and distribute the clothing people had sent for me to give away and some other gifts. It was slightly chaotic, as any distribution of goods can be, but the worst part was that I was being rushed the whole time. See, something apparently went terribly wrong in the car engine once we got there and it wouldn’t be able to get us back. The rental agency had sent another car to pick us up, and right when I had started distributing stuff, it got there and wanted to turn around quickly. Ultimately, I couldn’t spend the time I wanted to spend saying my goodbyes and giving things how I wanted to, but the most important goal was achieved, and that was to get those goods into the hands of the villagers.

I was pretty emotional driving back, just from the stress of the final hour and the knowledge that it was my last time. Unfortunately, the 4x4 they sent had to tow the other 4x4 all the way back over rough terrain, so we probably never got over 30 kilometers an hour. We did the final cliff roads right after sundown, which made me nervous, but when we finally got to the freeway, we ditched the stalled car and gunned it back into town. Altogether, it took 5 hours.

I slept ten hours last night and feel much better today. It’s hard to believe that that was the last trip. I’m in my final week now, so it’ll be a week of last times—last market day, last Monday, etc. But that’s all right, I’m so ready for it.

I think Ashley is going to take my kittens, or at least try to (hoping they don’t run away). They’re so affectionate these days. Sami is a first class kneader (cat owners will know what I’m talking about) and Pili still suckles everything, which is kind of gross but endearing. Then when they aren’t cuddling, they’re playing Ninja Cats. They love to play Ninja Cats, especially in the morning. That’s probably how Pili got herself into a bind; I heard her meowing but couldn’t see her, then I saw her little white paw sticking out from underneath an overturned clay water jar. She probably Ninja Jumped into it and rolled it over onto herself. Silly kitty.

Elephants, for better or for worse

Happy May! I come home this month!

Yesterday, we did indeed go to see the elephants, and what an ordeal it was. After I wrote the last blog entry, I ran into the guide again, and he said that we would leave at 5:30 instead of 6. That night, I cooked up split pea soup with Ashley and Maia, the British girl, then got sick later that night and threw it all up. I was afraid I would still be sick when I had to go see the elephants, but luckily my stomach was fine after getting rid of all of that delicious soup.

I got up at 4:45am when my alarm went off and got ready in the dark. At 5am, the rumbling of an engine announced the arrival of the 4x4 in front of our door. The guide was there, along with the driver and the owner of the car. I hadn’t wanted to give money for the gas up front, preferring to go with the station to make sure we actually got all the gas we were paying for, but that morning, they were like, “The owner says it takes 80 liters, so give us the money and we’ll go put it in.” I was sick of arguing, so I just gave them the money and asked for a receipt (which are all hand written and easily forged). In the meantime, I had to go pick up Maia on the motorcycle, since she lives across town. As I’m preparing to go, the owner and the guide are like, “Go quickly, we have to get going, don’t take a long time.” I just wanted to say, “Chill out, dude,” but their lack of English prevented me.

I drove my motorcycle over to the radio, where Maia lives, as dawn crept imperceptibly into the deserted streets of Douentza. The courtyard door was locked, which was to be expected; but no matter how much I knocked, the guard didn’t wake up to let me in. I was starting to get frustrated, having forgotten my phone, but then Maia came out and woke him up so she could leave. We got back to the house just as the car was getting back from the gas station.

Even then, as we were preparing, getting our final things together, the guide and owner kept hassling us about the time. When the guide was like, “This is how we do it in Africa,” I found a decent French equivalent of “seriously, chill out” because anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that hustle is not how they do it.

Finally, we were all piled in, with me sharing the front seat with the guide so I could stick my head out the window in case of emergency. We dropped the owner off at the freeway (what was he in such a rush for anyway?) then continued up the freeway towards Gao, that is to say, the opposite direction from Sevare.

I have to say, the drive up was the best part of the whole day. The sun, a hazy semicircle, was rising before us through the dust, flanked on either side by the surrounding cliffs. Seeing it made me want to get up early every day just to witness it.

We turned off of the freeway about 50 kilometers up and commenced our long journey off-road to where the elephants presumably were. A while later, we started seeing elephant poop, balls of grassy waste as big as your head. We arrived at a wooded area where the elephants are known to hang out, but alas, no elephants were to be found. When we asked a herder in the area, he said the elephants had left a while ago, and he pointed us in the right direction.

We arrived in a village with fresh elephant poop—apparently some had just passed right through the village not long before—where we picked up someone to show us the way. I might add that every time we stopped to ask for directions from someone, the guide felt the need to physically get out of the car, so I had to get out and let him out, then he always was kind of annoying and hesitant about getting back in the middle. Just outside the village, we saw two beefy elephants grazing in a stand of trees. They were pretty cool, but kind of hidden, and whenever you even wanted to approach a little bit, the guide would tell you not to. I understand—you shouldn’t get too close to wild elephants because they have killed tourists in the region before this year, and apparently if a tourist is killed by an elephant, the guide has to go to jail. But he was a little overprotective.

We looked at those two for a little while, then got back in to find the rest of the herd, apparently 20 or 30 animals. I switched out of the front seat at that point—I got sick of sitting next to the guide. The two hours that followed were some of the bleakest in the trip. We drove from where there was fresh elephant poop (not to mention two elephants) into the most depressingly empty landscape I’ve ever been in: sand, scrub, no birds, not even any cow poop, which is so ubiquitous everywhere else. I’m thinking, “This guy has no idea what he’s doing. Where on earth are we going?” To make matters worse, the engine would overheat about every forty-five minutes, and we’d have to stop and pour water on it.

Just when I’d given up all hope of ever liking life again, we got to a different bunch of trees, where the guide hopped out to go ask a herder if he’d seen the elephants. He motioned for us to come over from off in the distance, so we all piled out of the car with our cameras and picked our way across the cracked ground of a dry lakebed. When we approached, there was indeed a lone elephant taking a mud bath out across the lakebed. Then when we looked to the right, we saw a big group of them, maybe 35, bathing in a shallow lake along with a bunch of cows. Josh and Dan, the two American exchange students among us, were particularly excited and got closer than I thought was prudent. I was just hot, dehydrated (hadn’t brought enough water), tired (hadn’t slept well the night before), and only mildly happy. Yes, the elephants were cool, but the trip before was so harrowing and I’d already seen elephants twice before, so the happiness of seeing them couldn’t overcome my displeasure at the rest of the situation.

After a while of taking pictures, we headed back to find the car, which, in the meantime, had driven off to some unknown location. My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t swallow, and I was getting extremely grumpy with our guide, who’s like, “Oh, the car’s probably just behind that dune.” That dune was probably 100 meters away in direct sunlight.

Eventually we found the car, not over the dune, but the hood was up and the driver was dinking around with something. The guide told us to wait in the shade until they brought the car over, but finally it was taking so long that our desire for water outweighed our desire to stay in the shade, and we just walked over.

The drive back was awful. I was sitting in the far back, where the seats aren’t actually attached to the floor of the car, so every bump that the driver took too fast sent your chair flying into the air. The road was hot and sandy and long. Finally, we emerged on the road to Timbuktu at a village called Bambara-Maoude. I lost all faith in the guide when I asked him, “We’re north of Douentza, right?” and he said we were south. I knew we were north of Douentza. Timbuktu is north of Douentza. So clearly this village, along the way, also is. Really now.

Some people bought water and drinks for exorbitant prices, but I figured we weren’t far from Douentza, so I would just wait for something legitimately cold. It turns out, we were still 90 kilometers away on a terrible road. A few kilometers in, the guide asked, “Who knows how to drive?” and thinking it was just a question, I put my hand up. He told me the driver was tired and asked if someone else could drive. We all kind of looked at each other, unsure of whether he was joking or not. I said I knew how to drive stick shift, but not for a 4x4 vehicle on a terrible gravel/sand road. In the end, the guide was like, “Forget about it, it’s fine,” but then the whole way back I was not only hot and grumpy, but also afraid that our driver would fall asleep at the wheel, sending us tumbling down a sand dune.

We got back to Douentza at around 3:30, 10 hours after we set out. I gave the guide 6000, which he didn’t seem to pleased with, but he was a terrible guide, so I don’t care. After washing our faces and hands, we immediately set off on motos to the Tango for cold drinks. I stopped and got ice and sheep meat on the way, since I hadn’t eaten anything other than a couple of pieces of mango since the previous afternoon, considering none of my dinner stayed in me. We stayed there for about 3 hours, drinking soda and beer and either commiserating about the trip (Steve and I) or sharing the excitement of seeing elephants (Dan and Josh). Ashley didn’t come and Maia came later and remained largely neutral.

I went to bed at 9:30 and slept ten hours. Today I feel significantly more human. Tomorrow it’s off to Tongo-Tongo for the last time to install some solar panels, give out gifts, and say my goodbyes.