Pangolin Watch

Video

2009-07-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Farewell

2009-05-25T09:59:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-21T05:37:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

Here we are:

Solar panel installation

Final Douentza-area photos

Going away party

Coming soon: videos of Douentza and around.

Goodbye, Douentza

2009-05-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-08T03:32:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-07T08:16:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-01T07:10:00.001-07:00

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.

Off to see the elephants

2009-04-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

I went to visit Fatimata this morning and her baby is doing much better. He’s not feverish anymore and has enough energy back to cry and be a brat about nothing. Ah, children. He’s very cute, though, and Fatimata looked worlds better after a good night’s sleep last night. An old man at her house who spoke French thanked me and thanked me and thanked me for all of the help yesterday, which felt good, but also made me feel uncomfortable, just since it took so little effort on my part.

Anyhow, tomorrow morning at 6am, we’re off to see the elephants. Apparently there’s a troop of 20 in the region, so hopefully we’ll find them. I’ll report back on Friday.

Saving babies (or something like that)

2009-04-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

I had a relatively eventful morning, as far as mornings in Mali go. My friend Fatimata came over again, this time bringing her one-year-old baby boy. She had come yesterday and said that he was sick, so I told her to make oral rehydration salts and to come see me if he wasn’t better the next day. He wasn’t better. I packed them up on the back of my motorcycle and took them to the health clinic in town to get him checked out. He had a fever and diarrhea, and while I figured that it might just pass on its own, I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened, so it was better to just go to the doctor.

We waited for a while in unimaginable heat (today is awful), surrounded by other patients waiting their turn. I was afraid I would catch consumption there—people hacking, spitting, a young man with blood seeping from a pussy burn wound on his face. Malian streets are often horrific enough, so to condense the worst of the worst in one place had a nightmarish feel. Finally the doctor checked out the little boy and told us to get a malaria test. In the meantime, we bought paracetamol and anti-microbial syrups. All of that came to about $5. When I paid the 1000 CFA ($2) for the consultation, Fatimata was like, “Oh my my, this is so expensive.” It nearly broke my heart.

We went back to my house to wait for the test results. Ashley had come over in the meantime for me to take her to my tailor, which I did. When we came back, Fatimata had bought grilled meat and frozen sachets of ginger juice to thank me for all of my help. It was sweet.

She and I went back to the hospital a couple of hours later, as directed. Indeed, the child had malaria. We took the results to a doctor to get an anti-malarial prescription. I was shocked at how rude he was to Fatimata. First of all, a lot of the doctors there speak French and Bambara, but no Fulfulde, which is the major language of the area, so often I had to play translator between two Malians who couldn’t understand each other (and I barely speak Fulfulde!). But I was asking this doctor if we should continue the other syrup treatments we’d gotten that morning, and Fatimata presumably was asking the same thing, and the doctor snapped at Fatimata, in French, “I’m writing a prescription now! If you don’t understand what’s going on, you should just be quiet!” I wanted to hit him. It’s a problem here—people get educated and get nice jobs then think they are the boss of everyone else. Totally unprofessional.

Altogether, I spent maybe $12 on the treatment. Fatimata couldn’t stop thanking me. I certainly hope her little one gets better with these drugs.

Final stretch in Douentza

2009-04-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

I got back safely to Douentza on Saturday evening. Before leaving, I took my final trip to the bank and closed down my bank account. I got a last minute ride with the German woman who owns the Mankante, but then had to wait for over two hours. Needless to say, I was glad it was my last time.

I had lunch with Seydou at the Teranga, then went over to see where he lives in Sevare. The family he stays with has a very nice house—nicer than ours in Douentza. I told him he was probably better off there.

I didn’t have to wait long at the bus stop this time; a Sonef bus came maybe a half an hour after I got there. In the meantime, Seydou and I talked to this young medicine street vendor, who by talking to various tourists acquired an impressive amount of knowledge about the world. When I got back to Douentza, Steve picked me up and took me to Dave’s house, where Dave had made a sheep meat chili. It was delicious. We hung out for a little while before I went home and crashed.

Yesterday was election day here, and as a consequence of that, the market was nearly empty; everyone stayed in their villages to vote. I’m still waiting to hear about the election results for Tedie to see if M. le Maire is indeed M. le Maire once more. I did some work with Ramata and helped Steve out, then sat around in the evening with Josh as he made tea. All in all, not a bad day.

I helped Steve with a bit of work this morning, then Fatimata came over to hang out. She fixed up my Tamasheq garment better, and I’ve since been wearing it all day. I figured, why the hell not? I don’t have much longer in Africa, might as well go African. Except that I’m probably the only “Tamasheq” woman ever to wear jeans under the wrap and drive a motorcycle.

After lunch, I went to Ashley’s, where I helped her translate some French. I’m counting down my final two weeks here—one more market day, one more full Monday left. I’m thrilled. On Wednesday, we might go see some elephants, which would split up the week nicely. Then on Saturday, it’s off to install the solar panels. I’ve bought all of the materials now for that project and will use the rest of the money to buy notebooks and other school supplies. I’ll be sure to take lots of photos.

Sevare ice cave

2009-04-24T03:59:00.001-07:00

I am currently in Sevare enjoying my AC—it is quite wonderful. Josh and I left the house on foot at 6am yesterday morning and got to the freeway nice and early. We bought tickets for the Binke bus and had time for a fried egg sandwich while we waited. It came around 7:30, probably, and was kind of slow-going, but it’s better than taking turns at break-neck speeds, like Sonef buses are wont to do. My bus seat was not attached to the bus very well, so I felt like I was in a motion simulator a lot of the time. On top of all that, we got pelted by a fine rain of couscous from the open vent above us. All very mysterious.

I wanted us to hop off the bus before the main intersection in Sevare as opposed to going all the way to the bus station, since that would be a longer walk to our respective destinations (Mankante for me, the bank for Josh). After we passed through the police checkpoint for Sevare, a little ways up the road, the bus slowed down to let some people off, so I figured that was our stop. I figured wrong. We probably got off the bus about 2 kilometers outside of Sevare and ended up having to walk a lot farther in the dusty wind than if we had just gone to the station. Oh well, we got our exercise.

We parted ways at the main intersection and I carried on to the Mankante, where I got checked in. I had the choice of a room with a personal bathroom in the villa down the road where the wireless might not reach or a room with a bathroom next door in the main villa. After some debating, I took that one, and the internet has been working great. The AC is also rather arctic and nice.

I hung out and took a nap before lunch, then grabbed some spaghetti at the Mankante restaurant up the road. Right next door to the Mankante is a gift shop/bead museum run by a guy known as Peace Corps Baba. Abbie lived in the apartment above it during her third year of Peace Corps, so I decided to go in and check it out. I told the guys sitting there that I was Abbie’s colleague, and they instantly started exclaiming about how she was their sister, same mother same father, and now I was welcome as well. They all speak English, presumably since they travel the world to show at bead expositions and cultural shows. One of the guys showed me the bead museum then helped me look around the shop, where I was given good “sister” prices on the things I wanted to buy.

I left in a good mood and went back to the hotel, where I skyped with people until it was Bollywood party time. Bollywood party could have been better. I became head chef rather quickly, but the preparations were riddled with small disasters—not the spices I was used to, rice paper to make the samosas in instead of homemade dough, the lentils burned a little, the rice paper split open in the oil… it was rather frustrating. On top of that, there were something like nine or ten people there instead of the three originally planned. That’s fine, the more the merrier, but it diminished the intimacy a bit. Rabayah wanted people to watch Dil Chahta Hai, one of my favorites; since it is a three-hour-long movie, I told them to just start it while I finished up the food.

Despite the mishaps, the food was fairly tasty. I watched a little bit of the movie, then went to skype with Kevin. Afterwards, the movie still wasn’t done, but I decided to go back to the hotel and go to bed before it got any later. I have to go back over and retrieve my movies today.

With the Mankante being a bed and breakfast, I get my morning meal provided, and it was quite delicious. When Kevin and I stayed here, we just got tea and bread with jam and butter, but this morning I got all of that plus an omelette and a big plate of fresh mango and papaya. The guys working here are Dogons, so I talked to them about that for a while. There is really a friendly atmosphere at this place; everyone calls me by my first name and is really helpful, not to mention the lovely courtyard with flowering trees and four large tortoises.

Today I’m just going to take it easy and read and do some work in the AC, then tomorrow I’ll probably go to the bank in the morning, see Seydou for lunch, then go back to Douentza in the afternoon/evening.

Rolling blackouts

2009-04-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

I am now thoroughly rested up from my Ngouma trip and back to the rhythm of Douentza. Work with Steve in the mornings is beginning to go faster as everyone gets used to the language and working style, and we’ve taken to going to the Tango in the afternoon for a cold beer or soda escape.

This morning, my bread guy Ibrahim took me to a shoemaker’s place to measure my feet, since he wants to give me sandals as a present. He also gave me a couple of beaded necklaces. I can never be sure whether such gifts are purely from good will or if it’s fishing for monetary gifts later. Either way, it was nice.

Part way through the morning, I got a call from Josh, an SIT study abroad student we’d crossed on the road to Sangha. He said he was coming into Douentza and needed a place to stay, so I went and picked him up and brought him back. Unfortunately, Salif rolled up unannounced last night, so we are out of mattresses, but Nicolas said he could stay at his house. We’re going over there for dinner tonight—probably one of the last times I’ll see Nicolas, seeing as he will be leaving for Benin on Saturday (after I’ve already left for Sevare).

It’s been hot as blazes the last few days, made worse by the fact that we’ve had rolling blackouts. The power has always been back on at night, so between AC and fan, I can sleep well, but sitting inside during the day working, we just swelter. I’m looking forward to two solid days of AC in Sevare.

Ngouma

2009-04-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

I have made it to Ngouma and back and have lived to tell about it. So tell about it I shall.

I packed up my motorcycle with my gear and left the house after noon on Friday. I decided it would be prudent to stop at the internet and write down my Medevac numbers before I left, just in case of an emergency, so I did. Nicolas and I got on the road shortly after one o’ clock, reveling in the open freeway.

We did about 60 kilometers on the paved road before turning off on the road to Ngouma, a gravel road with quite a few dips and holes. The most annoying aspect of the gravel road, however, is the washboard effect. I don’t know how, but heavy trucks repeatedly going over it create stretches where the road becomes like a washboard, rattling your bike and your spine and being generally unpleasant/impossible to drive on. Between those stretches and the occasional pothole, the road kept us on our toes.

Luckily, we had no problems and arrived in Ngouma a little before 4PM. We asked the first person we saw to take us to Ousmane Diallo “the white guy” (Phil’s Malian name), and someone did. He has quite a big house with 4 rooms on a nice courtyard. The only problem is that he shares a main gate with another house’s courtyard, and his neighbors (especially the kids and the ten-year-old brides who aren’t allowed out) are always peering over the wall calling his name, like some sick version of Home Improvement. Kids here can be extremely annoying.

We dropped our stuff off, then Phil took us out on a greeting tour of Ngouma. It is quite a big town, with a central market and everything. Yes, I would say it has definitely achieved town status instead of village status. Nicolas and I waded our way through Fulfulde greetings (Ngouma is a Fulani town) and saw what sights there were to see, including a big beautiful mosque. We didn’t get any pictures, though, since the imam was demanding 1000CFA for a picture. Ridiculous.

We hung out in his courtyard with our goat captive (more about him later) until his host family called him over for dinner. It was rice and fish sauce—not my favorite, but tolerable. By the nightfall, we were exhausted and went to bed. Phil gave me his mattress on the roof, Nicolas spent an uncomfortable night in the hammock, and Phil himself slept on a mat on the roof as well. It was very windy and downright cold by the middle of the night, but luckily I’d brought a fleece blanket. I tucked myself into that and slept relatively comfortably.

Saturday was spent lazing around. It felt good to just be out of Douentza with no obligations. If I wanted to sit there and stare at the dirt all day, gosh darnit, no one could stop me. Nicolas made an effort to speak English with us all weekend and did relatively well, just asking for translation help every now and again. He, Phil and I turned out to be a good trio.

After a breakfast of rice fritters and leftover fish sauce (which I did not partake in), the butcher came over to send our goat on its way to goat paradise. Or so I hope. If you don’t want to know about the goat slaughter, skip the next paragraph.

Phil and the butcher held the goat down, facing Mecca, as is custom. The butcher uttered a blessing then slit its throat. Blood is so red. The initial throat-slitting is the worst part of the slaughter, since you have to hear the breath rasping through the throat and watch as the legs struggle and kick long after the animal has probably lost consciousness. Eventually, the goat was properly dead, and the butcher got right down to skinning it. Eventually, the slung it up by its back legs to get the rest of the skin off, and that’s when the grossest thing happened. It was as if the stomach couldn’t retain its contents anymore and the goat vomited through the whole in its neck. Mega mega gross. The butcher cleaned and removed all the organs and quartered the carcass, then carried it off to grill it. He’d gone and washed all the organs in the bucket Phil uses to bathe, so we had to go to the market and get some bleach for that. Rather unsanitary.

Anyhow, we sat around the rest of the morning, waiting for Meat Round 1 (lunch) to be prepared. We went over to his host family’s again for that, where his host woman had made a meat sauce with one of the quartered sections and a lot of the innards. Neither Nicolas or I could stomach (haha) the insides, but we ate some of the “normal” meat, which was delicious. After eating, his host man sat around forever making tea and talking in Fulfulde. I was tired and bored; eventually Phil picked up on that and took me back to his house so I could take a nap.

The rest of the meat came in a tub around 6 o’ clock. His host came over and we feasted. It was tender and delicious, and we all ate until we could barely move. Even then, there were two whole legs left. One his host packed up in a box and told us to bring to Douentza (slightly unsanitary?), and the other he saved and we had it in the sauce for breakfast. Phil disappeared for a while after dinner, delivering meat to various friends, so Nicolas and I hung out in the dark chatting. When he got back, it was off to bed. Again, it was windy and cold, but a nice change from the heat of the day.

Nicolas and I got going after breakfast this morning. We did about 3 hours on the road again, an exhilarating but exhausting drive. Luckily, no one got hurt. I’m just happy about that. It was a good trip all in all, and now if Phil talks about Ngouma, I’ll know what he is talking about.

Heat showers

2009-04-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Work is progressing little by little. We’re getting into some grammatical topics (noun phrase constituents, transitive sentences, commands, etc.) and getting used to one another. It’s always a slightly awkward situation, bringing the person you work with to come live with you, since you feel a lot of pressure to keep working with them just to keep them entertained, even if what you need is to stop and analyze some recordings or review your data. I’m trying to step back from that as much as possible, since it’s not my work, thus it’s not my responsibility. When Steve wants to work with Ely, I’ll be there for him, and when he doesn’t, that’s his choice; it’s not my responsibility to keep his assistant busy. Besides, I still have my own work to be doing. I’ve been typing the texts I transcribed with M. le Maire into my computer, and I’m going to work on translating them with Ramata a bit this evening.

The last couple nights, Steve and I went to the Tango to watch the soccer games that were on TV. I know nothing about soccer, but Dan evidently follows it and invited us out. It was actually pretty entertaining, especially listening to the Malians get really into it. There was this one man in a nice boubou who would stand up and shout “Eh?? Mais c’est pas possible!” (“but that’s not possible!”) whenever someone missed a goal. Steve likes to have a beer in the evenings, so we’ve been frequenting the Tango. I, however, have had my fill of beer and currently content myself with grapefruit soda.

It’s been really hot and muggy the last couple of days, with little heat thunder storms rumbling overhead. Apparently it even rained a bit last night. The humidity makes the heat quite nearly unbearable. Whereas with dry heat, your sweat evaporates pretty much as soon as it emerges from your pores, with this humidity, you’re just sticky all the time. All the more reason I’m excited to go home.

Either tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning, it’s off to Ngouma with Nicolas. I think it’ll be a fun trip, one of my final huzzahs on the motorcycle.

Back from Sangha

2009-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was quite the Dogon adventure. I got up as the sun was rising to get ready for our trip (and prove to Minkailou that I am capable of getting up early). In fact, I was probably the first one ready to go. We finally got on the road around 7:30 in our rented 4x4, stuffed full by Oumar, Minkailou, Steve, the driver and myself.

The road, of course, was non-existent, just a sandy track weaving between scrub bush and rocks, but the scenery was nice. We were in good spirits, even when the car overheated once or twice from trying to plow through sand and we needed to toss water on the engine.

Around 11:30, we pulled into a village called Banani, a touristy village located down the cliff from Sangha. There we stopped to eat lunch, relieved to peel ourselves from the stuffy car. Minkailou helped Steve and me bargain our way to souvenirs while we waited for the food to get ready. It was kind of fun to see all the “quintessential Dogon stuff”, but at the same time, I’m glad to not work in a tourist destination.

The villages themselves along the cliff are beautiful, though. Granaries with thatched conic roofs, carved doors, and then most striking of all, the old Tellem settlements nestled high into the cliffs themselves. The Tellem were the inhabitants of the area before the Dogons. They built their houses directly into crevices and overhangs in the rock face, protected from the elements and invaders. If you ask the Dogon how they were able to get up there and build, they will tell you that the Tellem had very long arms. They would have to be at least a hundred meters long to build in some of those places.

After a lunch of couscous, we stopped being tourists and got down to business. The drive up the cliffs to Sangha was one of the more hair-raising trips I have been on here. The driver took these hairpin curves on broken roads at break-neck speed. And mind you, there was no guard rail between you and a rocky plummet. I was praying all the Arabic prayers I knew on the way up (al-Hamdu li-lAh il-rabb al-‘alamina), and hey, they got us there okay.

Sangha is a huge village compared to any others I’ve been in. Its blossoming is largely due to Marcel Griaule’s work there and the awareness he raised for the village. Afterwards, it was missionaries and now NGOs, the 21st century missionaries. There’s electricity in the main village and nice hotels (nicer than Douentza) and schools, etc. I was quite shocked.

We found the people Minkailou had contacted about finding us someone for Steve to work with. We sat down in his house and eventually this big guy came in with a young man with dreadlocks. I guess they had originally proposed the big guy, but since it’s election season here, he doesn’t want to leave the zone, so he proposed his brother. That was all fine and good, but when we (and by we, I mean I, since Steve doesn’t speak French) explained the work and proposed our usual 3000 a day price, the young man told us he wanted 15,000 a day, the price he apparently charges as a guide. This threw us for a loop. We didn’t know he was a guide. 3000 a day is a very reasonable salary for our work. Oumar can work a full day of construction, hard manual labor, and make 2000. But tourist prices are not Malian prices.

I called Minkailou out of the room to talk to him about it, then Steve. I had my reservations about working with a guide in general, afraid that if he started off asking15,000, what other luxuries would he expect that we can’t afford? We decided finally that if we could get him down to 4000 plus his food and lodging, we would bring him back, but if not, we’d just figure it out in Douentza.

We proposed this new price and after a bit of discussion amongst themselves, the men present agreed. We were beginning to suffer from the oppressive heat, so we went over to one of the hotels and got cold drinks while waiting for everyone to finish up their preparations or their tea drinking.

The trip back felt like it was 3 times longer than the trip there. It was still hot, still bumpy, still sandy, and the car probably broke down 3 more times. I had to sit in the middle of the backseat, so I couldn’t even lean on anything. By the time the sun went down and we were still on the road, I was incredibly grouchy, so I just put in my headphones and checked out until we got home.

This morning, Steve and I started working with Ely, his assistant. It’s fun for me to start working a bit on another Dogon language, since it is proof of how much I’ve learned in this year. So much is familiar, both vocabulary and grammatical points, but there are still interesting differences. I can’t hear this guy’s tone very well at this point, but hopefully that’ll come soon. I think we were all a bit frustrated throughout the morning, but I think it’s just a matter of getting used to the working situation. Ely will get used to us asking him to repeat things a bunch of times, I’ll get used to having to play translator and keep it slow, since Steve has just started Dogon, and Steve will learn to speak some French and get his ear attuned to the new sounds. I think we’ll get good work done in the month I’m here, and then he’ll be ready to keep going on his own.

Business trip to Sangha

2009-04-11T09:37:00.001-07:00

Steve is getting settled in nicely. It’s great for me to have someone around to talk about Dogon linguistics with—I’m already feeling more inspired. I think this last month will be spent largely helping Steve with his work, since in all likelihood, he won’t find an English-speaking consultant and he doesn’t really speak French. I guess he’ll learn as he goes.

On Monday, we’re renting a 4x4 and going to Sangha to find him someone to work with. I’m going to come along as translator/tourist. Sangha is ‘the’ Dogon village, where Marcel Griaule did his ethnographic work in the first half of the twentieth century. When tourists come to Mali to go to Dogon country, Sangha is always an essential stop. I’m glad to have an excuse to go now.

I most likely won’t be at the internet again until that trip is over, but I will write all about it when I’m back.

Delayed return to Douentza

2009-04-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well, getting back to Douentza turned out to be a fiasco. I left Mopti around 11:30 on Thursday and ran into Rabayah coming out of work on my way to the taxi stand. We exchanged a few words, lamented about our cancelled Bollywood party, then I headed back to Sevare.

The bush taxi stopped right in front of the post office, and conveniently, my new laptop battery had gotten there. I took care of that while Seydou came over to meet me for lunch. We went to the Mankan Te and had a very pleasant lunch. Afterwards, he dropped me off at the Peace Corps bureau around 2, and Dave and I went together to the bus station to try to get up to Douentza.

Overall, we waited for over 4 hours. I wanted to get on an earlier bus than Steve and Minkailou were coming up on so that I would be there before they got to Douentza, but every bus that came through was full. Finally, the bus they were on got in, and the guy had sold us tickets for that bus, but that too turned out to be full and they refunded us. I at least met Steve at the bus station and told him I would try to be up as quickly as possible.

I was really bitter after that bus left. Dave and I waited around for a while then decided it would be just as easy to go in the morning, since it was too late to get up there before them anyways. I was in a bad mood about that, having cancelled my plans to get up there that night, and yet here I was staying again, yet without Bollywood. Anyhow, we went back to the bureau, and after a little while, he and I went out and got street food for dinner before meeting up with some other volunteers and some army guys at a bar. I wasn’t really in a drinking mood, but since I didn’t want to walk back alone, I got stuck out until 1:30 in the morning in a very terrible mood. When we finally went back, I skyped a little while with Kevin to vent then went to sleep on the roof.

This morning, Dave and I walked to the bachet (like mini-bus/vans) station and got the last couple seats in one leaving for Douentza. The problem is that they pack these things to the brim: 5 people for every 4 seats, and there is minimal ventilation, and they go really slowly, and are generally extremely uncomfortable. This ride was no exception. It took three and half hours to get up to Douentza, an hour longer than it would’ve taken by bus.

I was glad to get in and finally get to talk with Steve, though. He’s a nice guy and I’m glad that I’ll have him around. I’ll probably help him get started with his work on Sanga-So in the next few days, so that should be interesting. He’s probably a bit overwhelmed by French and the new surroundings for now, but hopefully he’ll get settled in soon.

Feasting in Mopti

2009-04-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Mopti! Tuesday morning, I took the bus down to Sevare to hang out for a couple days with no solid game plan. I felt empowered going it alone, though, and playing it by ear. For instance, I knew to get off the bus before the Sevare bus station, since the walk would be shorter, then walked to a restaurant called Mankan Te that I like, had lunch, then set off for the Peace Corps bureau. I ran into Dave and Braxton en route, who were surprised to see me there. We went back together and I camped out on the internet basically all day.

We tried to go out and get pork that night, a rare commodity here with Mali being a Muslim nation. Unfortunately, however, no pork was to be found. We ordered chicken, though, and I got mine with salad, after the brutal shock the night before when I found out that the salad had officially finished in Douentza.

The chicken was delicious, char-grilled with some sort of spicy mustard sauce. In the end, it was probably better than the pork would have been. Plus they gave me my salad for free.

I was naughty and slept at the Peace Corps bureau that night. You’re not supposed to, but everyone does it anyway. I wanted to use the internet until late into the evening, and I didn’t feel like going out and finding somewhere else to stay. I certainly wasn’t alone, though—all of the mattresses were occupied.

I made a fried egg sandwich for lunch yesterday before heading out for Mopti. I was supposed to go with Rabayah, but she wanted to go swimming in Bandiagara, since there was a Peace Corps car already going there today. I don’t blame her. I decided to just live it up and be a boss and hire a taxi to take me to the hotel as opposed to walking through the heat to the bush taxi stand. I think it was a good choice.

Most of the afternoon was spent on the internet and napping. It was while chatting with Abbie that I learned that Steve and Minkailou are planning to go to Douentza today, not on Friday, as previously planned. This put a serious kink in my Bollywood party plans. Rabayah, Susan and I were going to make samosas and watch Bollywood this evening, but now I have to go back to Douentza, since most of the keys are in my possession.

I was bummed, but then I Skyped with Kevin for a while and decided to go out to a nice dinner. I went to a place called the Bissap Café, on the waterfront. It has one of the nicest atmospheres I’ve felt at any restaurant in Mali. It has multiple seating areas—a garden terrace, a room where light shines through thick slabs of desert salt, and a rooftop terrace overlooking the street and the river. I opted to sit up there and watch the world go by.

It was very peaceful. I could gaze out across the port, watching the reflections of streetlights ripple on the murky water, serenaded by a chorus of bullfrogs. In between courses, I read my Discover magazine with the top 100 science stories of 2008 that Chev sent me for my birthday. All in all, I spent $20 on myself: a chocolate shake with cointreau, a wood-fired ground beef and ham calzone, fresh fruit sorbet, and a glass of hibiscus (bissap) juice. I figured if I couldn’t get my Bollywood party, I could at least treat myself to a nice dinner. It was fabulous.

Anyhow, it’s back to Douentza today. I’m looking forward to meeting Steve and getting him settled in. It will be nice to have a colleague around to talk to.

The latest photos

2009-04-07T12:17:00.001-07:00

Here is the latest album, with pictures from my trip to the village, my trip to Petaka, and my chicken feast:

Village fun

Chicken vomit

2009-04-06T04:05:00.000-07:00

I had a really good day yesterday. In the morning, Nicolas came over, and we went to the market together to pick up some lunch fixings. We went back to his house and cooked up pasta with fresh tomato sauce, an easy but delicious classic. For dessert, we had mangoes, which are beginning to come back into season. We hung out for a while and talked about life and work and being in Mali, then I went back to get some work done.

I had been in my room for maybe a half an hour when Oumar came to tell me that Fatimata had sent somebody to see me in the morning after I’d gone out. We puzzled over what that could be about, but figured we’d just go see her the next day. Not five minutes later, I get a knock on my door, and it’s Fatimata herself. I greeted her and we went to sit down together in the shade of my hanger. I called over Oumar to act as translator. (My Fulfulde is definitely not yet conversational, unless the conversation only consists of me saying ‘I only came to greet you’ [jowtude ma tan waddi am] or ‘If I am here, I will come’ [so mi wonii gaa, mi wartan].)

She pulled out a small cloth bundle and handed it to Oumar. He unwrapped it to reveal a crude horseman statue in weathered iron. The horseman is seated on a Tuareg style saddle with a turban, but the horse has no legs and the features are otherwise obscured either by simple work or age. She said that her brother’s motorcycle had broken down between Bandiagara and Bankass, and while he was looking around for a stone to pry his tire off with, he found it in the dirt. She had no idea what it was, but if I wanted to buy it, she would sell it. I held it in my hands and it *felt* old. I don’t know how, but it just did. I figured, sure, why not, either it is something legitimately old (I think I’ll get it appraised in the US) that maybe a collector wants, or it’s just a curiosity, but either way, I have no problem giving my friend $15. She’s always giving me things, after all. In fact, just the day before, Oumar gave me a little paper package containing a ring Fatimata’s brother had made for me. It’s beautiful: copper with a silver vine-like inlay.

Anyhow, after I agreed to buy it and she took a necklace of mine to fix, she told me that her mother was in the area, in a village called Petaka, about twenty minutes the highway. She really wanted to introduce me to her mother. I agreed whole-heartedly, and twenty minutes later, she and I and her baby son were on my motorcycle, on our way east up the freeway.

As with any village you go to, it is the children first who are fascinated with you. They looked at me in awe and a couple little girls held my hand for a while. We went back into the village and sat down on mats until Fatimata’s mom came over, a woman of about 65, I would guess. We took some photos while the children squealed in delight, then Fatimata ushered me back to a little mud house.

When I stepped into the doorway, I saw a large woman with huge bare breasts giving an enema to a newborn baby girl. The umbilical cord was still tied off and everything. I must have been visibly shocked at the whole thing, since Fatimata was laughing at me, saying something along the lines of how amazed I was. She took the baby into her arms and I took a picture. Then she handed it back and told me to take a picture with the mother. Only in Mali can a total stranger take a picture of a bare-breasted woman and her child and have it not be awkward.

I sat for a little while longer on the mats, then Fatimata came back to show me the road. She brought with her a live chicken, hanging dazed and upside down from a cord around its legs. She held it out to me as a gift. I didn’t know quite what I would do with a live chicken, but I graciously accepted it, and she slung it over my motorcycle handlebars. With lots of waving and goodbyes, I hit the road on my own, enjoying the freedom of not having a passenger with a young child on the back of my motorcycle.

The whole way back the chicken vomited or slobbered on my bare calf. It was gross and I wanted to be mad, but hey, if I were slung upside down off of a motorcycle I would probably be vomiting too.

Since I was already up on the highway and I didn’t want to weave through the market with a chicken on my motorcycle, I stopped at Nicolas’s house. I showed him the chicken and suggested that we just eat it. We both hesitated for a little while, not knowing entirely how to go about that, but then Nicolas said he would just slaughter it. How hard could it be, right? He took the condemned around the house and slit its throat, like we’d seen done numerous times here before. It’s harder when you’re the one doing it though.

I told him I’d go to the market and get some condiments while he plucked it. I decided to try and make a peanut sauce with plantains fried in ginger and chili on the side. With Oumar’s help, I found everything I needed. I’d also recently ordered a small mortar and pestle to be made, which had arrived the day before, so I brought that over to pound my ginger and garlic into a paste. Really, I just wanted an excuse to use it.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing, but everything worked out. Oumar came over and ate with us a while later, and everything I made was a hit. The chicken was good (couldn’t be fresher), the sauce had just the right amount of spice, and the plantains were delicious, as plantains are wont to be. Truly, I was quite pleased with myself. We sat around chatting until almost 10 before I went home.

I got bit by a spider while putting my mosquito net down last night, but I beat it to death with an empty soda bottle, and my hand never swelled or hurt. Then the kittens woke me up at 5:45 in the morning, crying at my door before jumping up and crawling in through a hole in my screen. Stupid kittens.

Tomorrow I will indeed go to Sevare, probably in the morning. I’m envisioning three nights. I figure that’ll be good, and I can get back here before Steve does.

Festing and resting

2009-04-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

This village trip, while fun and not too long, was not quite what I expected. Oumar and I left bright and early on Thursday morning and got to the village by 10:30. I was thankful that the hike was not as hot as I expected it to be.

My house was all swept and stocked with water, since Ramata had gotten there the day before and knew I’d be coming. I greeted people as they trickled in, par for course. It was then I was told that the festival hadn’t started on Tuesday, as I had previously been told, but rather started the next day, Friday. I figured this was no problem, since I would still get to see a dance either way.

The millet beer started early. In fact, my first stop in the village after my house was Ramata’s grandmother’s house. This little old lady makes all of the beer for the whole village. Needless to say, she is a popular destination for young and old alike. We sat around in the dim light, surrounded by clay jars full of fermenting millet beer, and passed around a gourd-ful ourselves.

Afterwards, I went with Ramata to her mother’s house. She was glad to see me, as always. Ramata’s older brother Oumar had gotten back from Cameroon, where he had been for at least three years, so his wife seemed to be happy. I must have given her some sort of knowing look, since she got all embarrassed and laughed and smacked my arm. I swear I didn’t do anything on purpose.

I spent some more time reading and drinking millet beer later. Unfortunately, come evening time, I wasn’t feeling very well. My head hurt and I thought I was going to throw up. I made an attempt at eating a little bit of dinner, but I had no appetite. I didn’t push my luck. 7 o’ clock, my mosquito tent was set up outside and I was in bed.

It wasn’t too hot at all to sleep. I think it’s hotter in Douentza than up on the mountain. I slept peacefully, cooled by a night breeze, until around 3 in the morning when my least favorite dog in the world started up its usual racket. Finally that abided, and I drifted back off to sleep, only to be woken up by puffed up roosters and early sunlight. I dragged my mattress inside and lay down for another hour.

Friday passed slowly. Reading, chatting with Oumar and Bureima, drinking bits of millet beer, etc. In the evening, I discussed my solar panel plans with the school director. He seemed very enthusiastic, saying that the school would never forget my name. We decided it would be best to try to get 2 ceiling fans in each classroom in the new building, then light for the director’s office and one classroom, so people can work at night. Everyone was in agreement that lights wouldn’t do much during the day, and I have to take their word for it. Anyhow, when I go to Sevare, I think this week, I’ll start buying supplies and get as much as I can within my budget.

The problem with village festivities is that they start way too late at night. Their market no one goes to until around sundown. We went with the others, milling around the small market place, Oumar taking pictures with my camera since I would feel awkward about doing it myself. While my head was better, my stomach was upset about something else that day, so I eventually had to dash back to the village and camp out for a while.

The dance itself didn’t start until maybe 10 or 11 at night. By this time, I was exhausted and in no mood for festivities. But Ramata came by and brought Oumar and I over to the dance ground, near the elementary school. My spirits were lifted by the sight of chanting stomping groups of men, some carrying burning poles and millet stalk torches. We watched them dance around for a while, each group from a different village (Kendenno, Entaka, Tongo Tongo), until they joined in a large swirling circle of stomping men surrounding a smaller inner circle of clapping teenage girls. It was very cool to watch at first, and I attempted to get video, even though it was clearly too dark. However, it just went on like that, not changing particularly, though evidently the songs were changing.

The point of Ondom Piri (the festival) is to sing about the wrongs people have done in the last year: lies, cheating, stealing. I guess if you understood the songs, perhaps it would be more interesting, since you’d be getting all of the village gossip from the last year. But I didn’t understand them, and I couldn’t even dance, since it appeared only to be men. Eventually I got tired and went to bed.

Everyone was disappointed, since apparently the good dance, where everyone (probably still men) carries millet torches and dances in a spiral, would be happening on Sunday. However, no one told me this before I got there, and I couldn’t stay. I have Fulbright papers Dave printed for me to mail today, and I was told he’d be leaving Douentza tonight or tomorrow. They said it was okay, that it left something to see next time I come back.

Oumar and I hit the road this morning around 8 and were back in Douentza by 11. It was a hot walk back, but not intolerable. As always, it feels good to be back in Douentza. I had an extremely cold soda and a yogurt. Phil, Dan and I all got back into Douentza around the same time, and Ashlely and Dave were already here, so we’re quite a crew. Apparently a car full of other volunteers I met on St. Patty’s will be passing through on their way back from Timbuktu, so I’ll probably get to say hi to them.

I’m kicking around the idea of going down to Sevare on Tuesday to spend a few days before Steve gets here. I’m hoping my computer battery got there and I’m feeling ready for some more good internet. That way, the following weekend I can go plan on going to Ngouma to see Phil’s village and maybe have a goat roast. Just a little over a month to go in Douentza.

Dead animals (not my own)

2009-04-01T04:18:00.001-07:00

I’m coming home next month! Now I can officially say it.

Not much new to report, but I will indeed be off to the village tomorrow. Around Douentza, things are hot and slow-paced, as usual. A couple observations about dead animals: apparently, Dave and Chris came back from Hombori and found a dead cat in their bathroom. Like under the cover, in the bathroom hole. Who knows. And then as I walk to the market everyday, I can watch the progress of this dead chicken slowly turning into a pile of feathers sinking into the mud, as living chicks peck around it. Always a good time.

I’ll be back on Saturday with tales of dancing and millet beer, I’m sure.

Honored guests

2009-03-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

Last day of March. Starting tomorrow, I can say, “I’m going home next month.” That will be good. I’m not miserable or anything, but I’ve just had my fill for now. I’m feeling stagnant. I need a change of scenery. But I’ll be off to my village on Thursday, and then back on the weekend, then next week my colleague Steve will be arriving in Mali. I may go to Mopti that weekend or Ngouma, but in any case, I’ll be moving around, doing things.

Yesterday was a good cultural integration day. I worked for a little bit in the morning with Ramata, went to the internet, then ate lunch with Ramata. A couple hours later, Ashley came over, and the three of us (Ramata, Ashley and I) started walking over to my jewelry friend Fatimata’s house. We crossed her en route. She was all dolled up in her finest, a flowing white boubou and big gold jewelry, looking even more beautiful than she usually is. Apparently there had been a wedding.

She walked the rest of the way back with us, instantly greeting Ashley in that warm way only Fatimata knows how to do. And the bits of Fulfulde I had learned were already coming in useful. I could already talk to her more.

When we got to her house, she ushered us into her bedroom, then brought us food on her finest plates and gave us ice water out of little tea cups. We were indeed the guests of honor. The four of us plus her little sister or someone hung out in there for a while, speaking a mix of English, French, and Fulfulde, but generally making ourselves understood. Fatimata is a riot. She just sat around in her bra for most of the time, totally casual. Then at one point, she went over to her little armoire and pulled out a vial of something, and before we knew it, she was sticking her fingers in Ashley’s armpits, rubbing this fragrant paste in there. Then it was my turn. I don’t know if we smelled bad or she just wanted to show us the stuff. In some way or another, she explained that she puts this stuff on everyday, otherwise she doesn’t smell good. It was fairly hilarious, this beautiful Malian woman in her bra sticking her fingers in the armpits of a woman she’d just met. In line with her usual generosity, she gave Ashley a woven pot cover, since Ashley’s Malian last name is Sankare and apparently the Sankares have been making such pot covers for as long as anyone can remember.

After hanging out a while longer, we got up to go home. I’m going to try to start going to her house more often, since she has such good vibes and she forces me to speak Fulfulde.

On our way back home, we took a swing through the market, and I bought some white eyelet lace fabric to make a sundress. Ashley had to go to work, but Ramata and I brought it over to my tailor. Hopefully he’ll understand my drawing, but he’s been pretty good before.

At sundown, I hopped on my moto and went up to the highway to buy some sheep meat. I think I’m pretty anemic here, and I was craving meat. I went to the butcher that Dave knows, who also speaks Tommo-So. We conducted the entire transaction in a combination of Tommo and Fulfulde. (“I don't like fat.” “Okay, do you want bones?” “Yes, some bones are okay.”) I took the little pile of meat, wrapped in brown paper, over to Ashley’s house to share. We ate it all (save for the rogue fat bits), then headed to our favorite restaurant for our obligatory salad and plantains. Finally, we rounded off the meal with a bottle of cold, delicious yogurt. It was one of the more satisfying meals I can remember.

I finished my chef book yesterday and am now reading “Monique and the Mango Rains”, written by an ex- Mali Peace Corps volunteer. It’s a compelling story, well written, and captures the feel of Mali really well. So if any of you wonder what village life is like, it would be a good book to read.

Camels in the desert heat

2009-03-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

I spent a rather long time in the market yesterday. A couple hours, at least, which, given the intensity of the surroundings, is quite a while. Ashley came over to my house looking frazzled around 11. It was her first time in Douentza market, and she did it alone to get to my house. Luckily, I had just made some ice water in my new pitcher, so she could cool down. The plan was to go out together and see the animals, as mentioned yesterday.

We left shortly thereafter, and I surprised myself with how well I had gotten to know the Douentza market. “This is the kola nut corner, this is where you can find Fulani wedding blankets, this boutique always has plastic products, even on non-market day,” etc. We went fabric shopping a little bit too. She wanted to get a couple wrap skirts and I’m on the hunt from white eyelet to make a sun dress. The day before, she’d lent me a really good Fulfulde book, which I started pouring through. I felt vindicated, since already, I could carry on small conversations in the market. I’m of the impression that people give you better prices when you speak their language.

I didn’t find quite what I was looking for, but Ashley got a couple of fabrics. As we were leaving a cloth boutique, we ran into Nicolas and his friend David, he apparently had swung by my house to drop off my (Dave’s) tortilla pan. We went the rest of it together.

We stopped at Ashley’s house to eat a little bit before going to the animal market. Then as a treat afterwards, we introduced Nicolas to the Phenomenal Yogurt. He had the initial reaction that most do: wordless bliss. When he finally spoke, he said, “To think of all that time I wasted not drinking this yogurt.” My thoughts exactly.

David split off from the rest of us, since he had something else to do. Nicolas grabbed his moto and went ahead of us with a random little Malian kid towards the animal market. When we got close, I could make out the sandy silhouettes of camels in the distance. I pointed them out to Ashley, but she couldn’t see them yet. Finally, she saw the group of 12 or so camels seated across the sandy field and got positively giddy. And I thought I got happy about camels.

We walked up to them and examined them, looking like permanently smiling furry dinosaurs or a flock of mammalian flamingos when seated. I explained their floppy lips, their squishy feet, and their impressive chest callous that keeps their body off the hot sand when lying down. She wanted to ride one, but didn’t have her camera, so maybe we’ll go back next week. Also notable at the animal market was a bull with the largest horns I had ever seen in my life. Each one had to be between 2 and 3 feet long. Not a bull you want to make mad.

I wanted to find a mortar and pestle in the market, but after scouring the back alleys, calabash row, the bean corner, to no avail, I gave up and went home. I took another bucket bath and lay around in front of the fan making Fulfulde flashcards for the rest of the afternoon.

In the evening, I joined Ashley and we went to get salads at our usual restaurant (where they make the Phenomenal Yogurt, the PY, if you will). I got mine with fried plantains and a little bit of beans. Delicious, nutritious, and filling.

Last night, I thought I would try and even out the temperature inside and outside of my room before bed by closing the door and cranking the AC for a while. When it got to feeling like an ice cave, I looked at my new thermometer. 87 degrees. I opened the door to go to the bathroom and I was hit with a hot blast of air, meaning it had to be at least 90 degrees at 11PM at night. In the desert. Which, by further deduction, means it must be 100 plus during the day. Ah yes, I will be glad to go home.

Taco night

2009-03-28T07:24:00.001-07:00

Taco night was a success last night. We showed up at Nicolas’s house around 7:30, and I promptly got to work chopping vegetables for the salsa. Shortly after we arrived, a Malian man came over, whom Nicolas appeared to know. It took me a second to realize that something was a little off with him.

It turns out, he’s deaf and Dogon, a combination my Dutch linguist friend will be excited to learn about. He stayed over and ate with the three of us, a French guy with some English, an American girl with some French, and me bridging the two. Despite communication gaps, we all had a very fun dinner, full of laughter, gestures, and of course, tacos.

Reading this book makes me want to do nothing but cook. But it is also a cruel tease, as it talks about braised quail with steamed brussel sprouts and whipped potatoes and all sorts of other delicacies I can’t find here. At the very least, it’s making me excited to go home.

Yesterday was full of small victories (the most that you can hope for here, since, on the whole, Mali always wins). For starters, I finally brought my bucket-and-pitcher scheme into fruition. I had always been frustrated by having to go out and brush my teeth at the common spigot outside in the morning and not having any place to wash my hands in my room. So I decided to get a pitcher, a bucket and a cup: Mali’s modern answer to the old chamber pot system (minus using them for the bathroom). It has proved terrific so far.

Second, my flashlight stopped working, so I went to the boutique to get a new one. The guy there doesn’t speak hardly any French, so I had to Fulfulde my way through it, and I still managed to bargain him down from 1000 with no batteries included to 1000 with batteries. Plus five for Laura.

I know I had more small victories, but they elude me now. In any case, it was positive.

Bureima, Ramata’s brother, came into town yesterday evening, so I got the news on the Ondom Piri, the festival that will be happening in the village. Apparently it starts on Tuesday, and then dancing goes on every 2 or 3 days for approximately two Dogon weeks (10 days). Unfortunately for filming, most of the dancing happens at night, except on the final day, but I will want to be back in Douentza and in cell phone network then, since my colleague will be arriving in Mali. Ramata is planning on going Tuesday, then Oumar and I will go out on Thursday for a couple of nights of millet beer, feasting (on millet?) and dancing, coming back on Saturday. It will be my last time spending the night there.

I will go out, of course, one more time at the beginning of May to electrify the school. The estimates I got from the electrician in Sevare are as follows:

Solar panel 175,000 ($350)
Battery 120,000 ($240)
Converter 60,000 ($120)

That comes to 255,000, or about $510. Add to that the cost of renting a car to get everything there, which will be nearly $200, the cost of 6 light fixtures, 6 fans, and wiring, and then the cost of an electrician to mount the whole thing, and I should be right about on budget of $1000. I’m going to get a second estimate from an electrician in Douentza to compare, but I’m feeling very positive.

Market day is tomorrow, and Ashley wants to go see the animal market and see the camels. I actually haven’t graced the animal market yet myself (despite being quite the animal husbandsman), so it should be fun, albeit intense. Lots and lots of camels. I do love livestock.

Cheffery and the like.

2009-03-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

First things first—I am feeling better, so no worries about my stomach condition.

We went to the Tango on my birthday night, me, Dave, Oumar, Nicolas and Antony, who got into town. I only drank half a beer and passed it off, not wanting to push my luck with my stomach. Luckily, the Tango had the grapefruit soda I adore—the first time I’d seen it in Douentza! We had a bunch of greasy street food brought in (sheep meat, which is wonderful, much better than beef, beans, and fries) and had a feast. I went back fairly early and went to bed.

Yesterday, I hung out with Ramata a bit, since it had been a while, and went over to Dave’s house to make some curry fried rice for lunch. It turned out okay. Could’ve been more flavorful, but it didn’t taste like Mali, so it was a good change of pace. Ashley and I hung out for a bit in the afternoon, and I read and did some work in the evening.

Before dinner, my leather-worker friend Fatimata came over, just to say hi, even though we speak none of the same languages. I’m making an effort to pick up a bit of Fulfulde. I can greet like it’s my job now, and say things like “This is pretty”, “Fulfulde is nice”, “It’s hard”, etc. She also taught me (even though I instantly forgot) how to count to 10 in Tamasheq, a Berber language spoken in Northern Mali and other Saharan countries. It’s the language spoken by the Tuaregs, the only Malians that ever seem to make it into Western news. I may start going over to her house to learn a bit of both, just for fun. I also love to watch her work.

Today, Ramata and I hit up the market early for produce and meat. It was my first time venturing into the butchery section of the market. I’d bought raw meat from isolated butchers, but never in the thick of it, the sounds of hacking ringing off all the walls in their enclosed courtyard. The vegetarian in me would’ve been horrified, but it was kind of need seeing all these guys with machetes chopping away at hunks of (presumably) beef. I bought a kilo of filet mignon for $3.50 and went on my way.

Ashley and I went over to the Norwegians’ house before lunch to use their meat grinder. It’s taco night tonight at Nicolas’s. Katie, the missionary woman, was sweet as usual. You couldn’t find a nicer woman. She’s in the midst of making a short movie of the story of the Good Samaritan in Fulfulde and set in a Fulani village. I read the script, and it should be cute.

I ate lunch at Ashley’s house, then worked on double checking some plant specimens and inputting their names into my spreadsheet. It’s interesting to take a little trip into botany every now and again. Otherwise, I’ve been reading my book about becoming a chef (The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America). It makes me miss having a kitchen.

23 in Mali

2009-03-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today has been my first birthday out of country! The big 2-3. It actually sounds young to my ears. Age is just not really pertinent here, and removed from all of my peer groups from college, I just forget how many years I’ve been around. But it’s good to be young.

In a way, it just feels like another day, as birthdays are wont to do even in the US, but I opened some presents my parents sent this morning then Phil and Ashley and I made banana pancakes and punch. Unfortunately, my stomach has been plagued by some sort of microbe for the last week, which diminishes my desire for eating good things, but it’s all right. I’m self-medicating some Cipro, and since that isn’t working real well, I might self-medicate some giardia medication next. Fun fun.

Yesterday was spent just sitting around feeling gross, mainly. I wanted to get a lot of work done on the grammar, but I just didn’t have much in the way of concentration. I thought a lot about possessive constructions, though, in between playing spider solitaire, curling up in a ball, and reading the Consolation of Philosophy.

Anyhow, hopefully my stomach will clear up and I can get focused again.

Hot season in Douentza

2009-03-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

First off, new pictures:

Good times in Mali

After updating my blog on Saturday, I left the Peace Corps bureau to begin my quest Douentza-wards. Seydou came and met me up the road, and we went to inquire after solar panels. We stopped at a boutique that called an electrician over to discuss my plans. I told him about the school, how it was two buildings with six rooms, and I was envisioning putting in lights and fans. The estimates he gave me fit in my budget, with room to buy lights and fans too. I will summarize the information in a subsequent post (I don’t have it right in front of me).

Afterwards, we went to the bus station to figure out when buses were leaving to Douentza. I wanted to take Seydou and Minkailou out for dinner, but it turned out that the bus was supposed to come sometime in the next hour, so I couldn’t. I bought some street meat and sodas, though, that at least Seydou and I could enjoy. Just as I was waiting to get on, Minkailou showed up in a very sharp pin-striped suit. I got on the bus around 6:30, and it felt as if they had actually turned on the AC during the day (though they had shut it off come the evening). Their TV even worked, and they were playing some TV show in Bambara that people on the bus found absolutely hilarious. I, of course, had no idea what was going on.

We pulled into Douentza around 9:45, but the phone network didn’t work at all. Dave had told me to call him, since if he wasn’t at the Tango, he would come pick me up. Although I couldn’t get a hold of him, Oumar had heard I was coming in and was waiting for me as I got off the bus. We went over to the PC house and found Dave, Dan and Phil hanging out there. We stayed there for a while before I got tired and went to bed.

Yesterday was market day. We made another delicious pasta and tomato sauce lunch. Dan left in the afternoon, and Phil took me over to see Ashley’s house. It’s a nice but simple second floor apartment in a traditional Malian house. She was feeling a little under the weather (as have I lately), so she just stayed at home. I did some work in the afternoon, then Phil and I went to the freeway for dinner. Potatoes and beans, delicious and filling.

I got a lot of work done in the morning, first alone organizing some aspects of my next grammar chapter, then with Ramata, who’s on vacation now. At 12:30, I went over to the PC house for lunch. Dave left this morning for his site, but Phil and I shelled some seeds for his tree farm before going to Ashley’s to eat.

I’m just hanging in there, in a contemplative mood, getting lots of work done. It feels good.

Fun times in Mopti region

2009-03-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Despite being in constant internet access, I have been dropping the ball on updating PW. But as my departure to Douentza looms close at hand, I will give you all an update on my week.

On Tuesday morning, 10 of us set out across the fields from the Peace Corps office to the bus station. There, we all crammed into an old school station wagon: 4 in the back, 4 in the middle, 2 in the front and the driver. Dave had his little speakers, so we were playing some music, cruising along the Bandiagara road as the toobob clown car. At times, I would forget where I was, then I would look outside and see Dogon women carrying baskets on their heads or herder boys watching the car go by. Strange juxtaposition.

We got dropped off in front of the PC house in Bandiagara, a nice little apartment with flowering trees in the courtyard. There I met another 4 or 5 volunteers with whom I would share my St. Patrick’s Day festivities. After everyone greeted and got settled, half of us set off on an expedition to the swimming pool at a hotel across town.

The hotel (Cheval Blanc?) has a very unique and charming feel, with little stone igloos for rooms and a stone bottom pool that feels really natural. The French guy at the reception assured me it was “hyper propre”—hyper clean. We all could have laughed out loud, it felt so good to be in the water. Dan and I ordered some gazpacho for lunch, and we all got a beer. The rest of the crew showed up eventually, and we all stayed in the pool for probably a good 4 hours.

After we finally wrenched ourselves away, some of us went to get street food for dinner. I stuffed myself on 300 CFA worth of food—beans, rice and plantains. I was so full and tired when we went to the next hotel that I went back with another volunteer, Ryan, to take a nap at the house. We came back fresh and ready and stayed up until probably 2 in the morning. The last stop, the Auberge, was nice. We were able to put our own music on the speakers and dance and hang out until one by one, we went upstairs to sleep on the roof.

We all got fried egg sandwiches for breakfast the next morning (Wednesday), then the same clown car taxi came and picked us up to take us back to the bureau in Sevare. We hung out there for the day, then Rabayah and Susan and I went out to dinner with one of the PC bosses that evening. She and Susan had business to talk about, but Rabayah and I were just bumming a ride to Mopti off of the PC car.

We went to a well-known place called Mac’s Refuge. Mac is American, but was born to missionaries in Mali and grew up here most of his life. He opened this guest house/restaurant ten years ago that serves family style meals of various sorts every day, and he is always present for them. He’s a nice guy, but a little overbearing at times. His food was delicious, though. $10 bought a 3 course meal: first soup, then roast beef, sweet potato fries, steamed bread rolls, and salad, and finally homemade ice cream and chocolate syrup for dinner. Plus he was on his way back to the States in a couple days and was celebrating with sangria on the house. It was altogether a very pleasant meal (where I ate way more than I should have), but it dragged on a bit long.

We finally got to Mopti (where Susan and Rabayah live) around 10PM. I checked into my hotel just fine, but found that my original fan room I had requested didn’t connect to the wireless. So, darn, I had to upgrade to an AC room. I mean, I had to pay for it, but it was worth the luxury. Unfortunately, they shut off the internet a little after midnight, but I went to sleep and started my internet time again in the morning.

I spent most of Thursday lounging around on the internet, Skype-ing, e-mailing, working on my grammar, etc., until Susan came and met me at the hotel so we could go to Rabayah’s house together to make dinner.

Rabayah has a very pleasant apartment in a gardened courtyard. It’s really nice. We made spicy beans and corned beef for dinner, with this millet and peanut porridge Mac had given me for desert. Again, we all probably ate too much, but when something tastes good, you just want to keep eating it. After dinner, they escorted me back to the hotel, and I stayed on the internet again until bedtime.

I woke up during the night to the power coming and going. It was storming and raining (again?), and my AC and fan got caught up in the mix. I stayed until about noon the next day, at which point I checked out to find Susan and Rabayah.

Rabayah’s work, with women suffering from fistula, is right near my hotel, so I walked over there to find her. Unfortunately, when I got there, she wasn’t there and her phone had fallen into the toilet hole in Bandiagara. Also, none of the women spoke French and I speak no Bambara, so we were out of luck. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), there were a couple guides there hitting on me and being generally sketchy, but they helped me figure out that someone was going to take me to Rabayah’s house after she ate breakfast.

The sketchy guys left, and I was left sitting under a little shelter, shivering from the cold misty wind. The woman I was waiting for was taking forever, and I was afraid Rabayah’s was going to leave to go to lunch at her host family’s house. At one point, I tried to get up and leave and just catch a taxi to Susan’s work, but the woman I was sitting with stopped me and tried to explain to me that we would go. I wanted to tell her I was afraid Rabayah would leave, but alas.

Finally, the other woman came over, and the three of us stumbled through the mud and rain until we got to Rabayah’s house. Luckily, she was still there. She hadn’t gone to work because she was feeling a bit under the weather and it was raining (a good enough excuse not to go to work here). It turned out fine in the end, but it was sort of an ordeal at the time.

After making some more porridge, we took a taxi to her host family’s house. The taxi system is really nice in Mopti. It works rather like a bus system. The taxis run up and down the road along the river, and every fare is 150 CFA, so you don’t have to worry about getting ripped off. The road was so muddy on her host family’s street, and we were both afraid of completely wiping out in it. I slipped at one point, but only got my knee muddy.

We got to her host family’s house and sat with one young woman, Fantasila, for a while. She brought us lunch and we hung out until we decided to meet up at Susan’s place. We carefully picked our way back down the mud trap road to find another taxi, and made it there relatively uneventfully.

Susan also has a nice apartment, a spacious one on the second floor. We opened up a couple cans of Indian food she’d had sent to her and made that for dinner. Once again, we probably ate way more than we should have. We were all tired and went to sleep early, then in the morning made French toast with bissap (hibiscus) syrup. I can’t complain about how I’ve been eating.

Today, Susan and I shoved ourselves into a communal taxi-truck and went to the bank in Sevare. We didn’t even have to wait that long. Afterwards, we hit up the little grocery store that has delicious soft serve ice cream and used that to power us through the long, hot, and now muggy walk back to the Peace Corps bureau.

I got more e-mail here, including one telling me my flight itinerary was pushed up one day! Now I will be leaving on May 19th! I’m pretty excited about that. I mean, it’s only one day and I’m actually fairly happy here, but it’s still awesome, since I’ll just be chilling in Bamako then anyway.

After this, I’m going to meet Seydou and we’re going to do some research on solar panels. This thing is really happening. But I am still open to donations (the more I can raise, the better the panels will be or the more equipment I can add on!), so contact me if you would like to donate. Or find my paypal button a few posts back… then it’s back to Douentza this evening. Ashley, the new volunteer, moved in last night, so it’ll be great to have a girl up there!

All in all, it has been a very fun and eventful week. But now it’s time to go home. Apparently Oumar lost the keys to my house (just the main room, not my room), with my cats locked inside, but he sprung the lock. Now it’s time to get that changed. Always something to do in D-town.

Sevare

2009-03-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

This afternoon around 3, Dave, Dan, and I headed up to the freeway just in time to hop on a Gana Transport bus to Sevare. It was a remarkably smooth trip. We got seats together, the bus wasn't overcrowded, and it made good time getting into town. Once we arrived, we walked probably a good couple of kilometers to the Peace Corps bureau, where I currently am. It's my first time here, and it is really quite nice. Wireless internet at least, so I can't complain. I met about three more volunteers, and Jason, the guy who was up in Douentza last week, is still hanging around to go to Bandiagara. We got good brochettes for dinner then watched Slumdog Millionaire (very good). Tomorrow we'll be off to Bandiagara, then back to Sevare/Mopti on Wednesday.

Impending voyage? TBD.

2009-03-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

My weekend was fun and productive. I worked some more with M. le Maire, finishing up the last of the texts to transcribe, on Saturday afternoon, then that evening, I met up with Nicolas at the Tango for a beer. Hanging out with him is good, since it forces me to clean up my French, which kind of takes a beating in Mali otherwise. Though I must say, I have greatly increased my French vocabulary from working on the dictionary.

Sunday morning, M. le Maire and I started translating the texts, but as usual for a market day, people constantly came by to greet and we gave up the effort after a while. Nicolas came by and we chatted, then I got a call from Dave saying he’d gotten into town. We decided on doing a pasta lunch, so went to the market to pick up the essential produce. I spoke a lot of Tommo-So there, since it seemed that every woman selling what I needed was a Tommo.

When I got to Dave’s house, some people from his village were there. We cooked lunch for all of them, and chatted in a mixture of English (me and Dave), Fulfulde (Dave and his villagers) and Tommo-So (me and his villagers). It was fun, and they really enjoyed the food. Dave said his boss was coming up that evening and that maybe we could hitch a ride to Sevare with her the next day, since apparently there will be a shindig for St. Patty’s Day in Bandiagara, but she never ended up coming. Maybe today.

I went back home after lunch to see if M. le Maire was around, but he wasn’t, so I worked on my grammar, finishing a rough draft of the chapter I intended to get done by Tuesday. After eating dinner with M. le Maire and Ramata, I went back to Dave’s house to see if said boss came in, but she hadn’t. We got a couple of beers in any case.

This morning, I went over to see Fatimata again, since I’m getting some things made, then chatted with M. le Maire. He’ll be going back to Tedie tomorrow, and I might be going to Sevare this evening, depending on Dan and Dave’s plans. I was going to go down on Wednesday anyway, and I would like to hang out for St. Patty’s day, but if no one else is going down, I’m not going. To be determined. If the next blog entry is from Sevare, I will let you know.

A good effect of climate change?

2009-03-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

Mid-March, already? This means I have less than 2 months left in Douentza, almost down to a month and a half… I’m trying to be as productive as possible in the time remaining while still fitting in the last bit of time to hang out with my friends here.

Yesterday, something crazy happened. It rained. It’s not supposed to rain in March, but rain it did, and fairly hard too. It started when I was leaving the internet. I was nearly laughing out loud as I drove back through the light sprinkle on my motorcycle, feeling like those raindrops were washing away months worth of dust and sweat and stress. When I got home, it started raining harder, so I hid out in my room to make sure the roof didn’t leak. (It didn’t.) It sprinkled on and off for the rest of the evening, cooling things down a bit. Unfortunately, the cool weather didn’t really last, but it was good while it was here.

Around 8, we went over to Nicolas’s house, where I cooked up a fresh tomato sauce and some nice linguini my parents sent me for my birthday. It was M. le Maire, Oumar, Nicolas and I, kind of a strange group, but it was nice nonetheless. At least the pasta was delicious (if I don’t say so myself). I think Nicolas and I might go to the Tango tonight and just relax.

This morning, after transcribing another text about traditional Dogon funeral rituals, M. le Maire and I went over to my friend Fatimata’s house, the one who gave me the necklace. She was working on some leather cushion chairs; it’s always fascinating to watch her work. She showed me some of the things she makes, but since she was busy, we didn’t stay too long.

The house M. le Maire spent a lot of time in as a young man is right around the corner, so we went to say hi to his family. We went into the first second floor room I’ve been in in Douentza, where his uncle, Ende, was staying. He is a retired high school teacher who has lived and worked all over Mali and even in Cote d’Ivoire. I sensed the same wisdom in him that I feel in M. le Maire. We talked about American politics for a while, before railing on the Malian education system. People see the social problems here, but it must be that the people in power don’t care to do anything about it, since it never changes. I can only hope that some day these people with a passion come into power and whip Mali into shape.

Farewell to friends

2009-03-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

All of my friends (save Nicolas) have gone their separate ways now. Yesterday morning, I got up at 7:30 and drove Dave the 25 kilometers to his village, Dimba Toro. It’s a pretty drive, down the freeway towards Borko, so I’m familiar with it. It was the first “big” trip I’d taken with my new motorcycle, though, so that was fun.

He has a really nice house in the village. I guess the Peace Corps has standards: cement floor, screened doors and windows, a water filter, his own little courtyard, etc. Makes my house look like I live in a pile of mud. Because I kind of do. We walked around his village on the obligatory greeting tour. It’s a Najamba-speaking village, a dialect of Dogon close to Tommo-So, so most Najamba speakers are bilingual in Tommo. Dave doesn’t speak any Dogon, only Fulfulde, so his villagers were surprised and delighted when I could speak it. I stuck around for probably almost an hour and then drove back through an incredibly strong dusty wind to Douentza. I wish my village were so close to home.

After I scrubbed myself clean of all the road dust, I went to have a last lunch with Phil. We made grilled meat and Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, a nice break from rice and sauce. I took him up to the spot on the road where his transport to Ngouma comes, and we waited there for almost 2 hours, sitting on a ripped palm-frond mat under a thorny tree. Eventually the overcrowded 4x4 came by and he climbed on top, ready for his 90 kilometer journey.

I went home and did some work for a while. M. le Maire got into Douentza, so we had dinner together, and then with Oumar, we split a bottle of white wine I had brought back from Bamako. I’m expanding their wine horizons, little by little. All they know here is not even wine. It’s just like rubbing alcohol with red coloring. A couple months ago, I brought back red wine, and so now they were amazed to find white wine. I tried explaining to them the differences between kinds of grapes and how there are even a lot of different kinds of reds and whites, but they didn’t totally get it. In any case, we chatted and had a pleasant evening.

When I went back into my room, there was a red blinking light on my computer where the battery symbol used to be. My battery, which had been on its last leg for a while, is officially no more. This means that my computer doesn’t work unless it’s plugged in, which is okay, but not great. And my back-up computer is a Mac that doesn’t support a lot of my work. Hence I am not in the best of spirits today. Couldn’t it have waited another 2 months?

Comings and goings

2009-03-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, Jeremy didn’t come in until almost 1am. Everyone was tired out, so people turned in early, and I waited up, listening to music and playing Solitaire until I got his call. We had an ice cold beer at the Tango, then went home and crashed. I slept better that night than I think I have for weeks.

Sunday was International Women’s Day and Monday Maouloud, the Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday, so because of these two holidays, official business such as the market was kind of messed up this weekend. It appears that a movement was made to have the market on Saturday instead of Sunday, so Saturday was more crowded in town than usual. But then most of the people didn’t get the memo, and there was still a market on Sunday. Jeremy tried to just turn around and leave for Timbuktu on Sunday, so I took him up to the freeway to wait for transportation.

We decided to go to one of the campements, the “hotels”, in Douentza for a nice dinner (or at least as nice as it gets in Douentza). Dave’s friend Jason got back from Timbuktu that afternoon and Dan left for his village, so it was the five of us. Around 7pm, right when we were about to leave, I got a text from Jeremy asking if I wanted to join him for a beer. Apparently he’d been sitting around all day and still hadn’t found transportation. I instantly hopped on my moto to go up and try to find him at the Tango, but when I got there, Brahima, the bartender, told me he’d just left. I cruised the highway for a while looking for him, but to no avail. To make matters worse, the cell phone service has been terrible lately, so I literally tried calling 50 times and could not get through to him. I’d told Dave and company to meet me at the Tango so we could go to dinner, so finally I went back there, and Brahima told me Dave and everyone had just passed by and left. Luckily, I caught up with them just fine.

Mid-way through our meal, I got a call from Salif saying Jeremy had gone to my house and they were now in the market. I covered up my couscous, got back on my moto, and drove into town to pick him up. He came back and joined us for dinner, then we went to the Tango for a couple beers afterwards.

Monday morning rolled around, and I woke up at 7am to see off Hala and Adam and also Salif, he was heading back to Bamako. I was exhausted. Once they were on their way, I went back to bed until 11am, probably the latest I’ve ever slept in Mali. Jeremy and I sat around reading most of the afternoon, until he decided to try the transport game again. I dropped him off around 3 and told me to call or text me if he needed anything. I didn’t hear from him until the evening, when apparently he’d gotten in a car to go.

I did some work on my grammar, read my book (The General and His Labyrinth), and listened to some music. Dave came over in the evening, and we got dinner then watched Interview with the Vampire. We got a message from Phil saying he was coming into town, so Dave went back to the house to wait for him and I got some more bedtime reading done.

I was going to drive Dave to his village today, but apparently now he wants to go tomorrow. I’ll probably see Phil and Dave for lunch, and maybe do some work with M. Guindo in the afternoon. I go to Mopti in about a week to spend a couple of nights with wireless internet and a shower. Being in seclusion there, I will probably be able to get a lot of work done on the grammar. I’m hoping M. le Maire will be coming from the village this week so we can work on a text, but we’ll see, I guess.

BBQ party

2009-03-07T03:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we sat around all day in my AC watching movies. Hala and I watched Wall-E in the morning, then after lunch Adam joined us for The Big Lebowski, as did Dan and Dave partway through the movie. After that was done, no one wanted to move, so we just stayed in and watched Mean Girls. At that point, it was 8PM, and we needed to report to Nicolas’s house for said barbecue.

Nicolas and I did most of the work preparing the kebabs, and Dave kept his eye on those that were cooking. They were pretty good—meat (probably beef), onions, and tomatoes, grilled over hot coals. Nicolas made fries and had beer and soda there, so altogether it was quite the feast. We just hung out, Dave and Dan, me, Hala and Adam, Nicolas and his friend David (Malian), and Oumar showed up at the end, speaking in a mix of languages, Nicolas doing his best in English, Dave attempting to speak French. It was a lot of fun.

We went home around 11:30 and I had the best night’s sleep ever. I did not want to get up this morning. But M. Guindo was going to come over at 10, so I needed to haul myself out of bed and make sure Hala and Adam were doing okay.

Adam and I went to the market to get breakfast makings. Since Hala came, we’ve been cutting up fresh fruit (papaya, mango, banana) and mixing it with fresh yogurt. Delicious. We also picked up some green peppers and tomatoes to try and make stuffed peppers for lunch. The ladies selling them spoke Tommo-So, which is always a lot of fun at the market. The other day a Tommo-speaking woman from my commune gave me free onions since I could speak Dogon. The numbers always mess me up, though, since the base unit of currency is the equivalent of 5 francs. So I asked how much some bananas were, and she told me ‘40’, and I’m thinking, “Forty francs? No way.” Then I remembered that really it’s 40 x 5, so 200.

We’re also going to try and make banana ice cream today. They were selling vials of banana flavoring at the store this morning, and I picked up some fresh bananas, so we’ll see how that goes.

On the Phil’s health front, apparently he has typhoid and a bone infection of the ribs and shoulder. Poor guy. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do just yet, but hopefully he’ll be fine.

I guess Jeremy is coming through Douentza tonight on his way up to Timbuktu, so we’ll have quite a full house here.

Guests galore

2009-03-06T06:13:00.000-08:00

Phil remained (and possibly remains?) sick. I ate dinner on my own Tuesday night, then made three trips between my house and his, bringing him meds or food. Good thing I have my motorcycle. Yesterday evening, he left for Sevare to go to the doctor there, so hopefully he’ll get a real diagnosis and get better.

But to backtrack, I worked with M. Guindo on Wednesday morning, looking at the semantics of various adjectives. For instance, /ɛ̀lɛ̀lú/ can mean both ‘sweet’ and ‘sharp’, and then is used in all sorts of expressions like /kùù ɛ́lɛ́lú/ ‘good luck’ (literally ‘sweet head’), /àŋà ɛ́lɛ́lú/ ‘a liar, someone who says whatever he wants’ (literally ‘sweet mouth’), or /nììndɛ̀ ɛ́lɛ́lú/ ‘a woman who gets fat and happy after marriage’ (literally ‘sweet tongue’).

I was just about to head over to Phil’s after that, when I got a call from Hala and Adam, the two tourists I’d met in Bamako and again on the bus to Douentza. They had gotten into town after a trip to Timbuktu and were waiting at the freeway. I hopped on my motorcycle and went to meet Phil, then together we went down to meet them and had lunch.

Afterwards, we took their stuff back to my house, then hung out for a while. That evening, Dave and Dan came back into town too with some guy they’d met at the softball tournament, Jason. Jason is on his way to Timbuktu today. After dinner in the market, Hala and Adam went back to my house to sleep and the rest of us went out to the Tango for beers. Unfortunately, they ran out of beers, so we went back to the Peace Corps house and hung out on the roof until I decided it was time for bed.

Yesterday, we decided we would make a delicious pasta lunch. It’s still the heart of tomato season and Dave’s garden has a lot of basil in it, so we set to work. We made a fresh, chunky tomato sauce with green pepper in it, along with some pasta, then sprinkled fresh basil and parmesan cheese Dave’s parents had sent to him. It tasted like America. Or Italy. In any case, it didn’t taste like Mali, so that was a nice change of pace.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out at the Peace Corps house, playing ladder ball, etc. I finished paying for my motorcycle registration around 3, then we decided to bring beers back to the house at night and drink them there. We probably looked like pretty big bums, buying a lot of little beers, since they had run out of the big ones, but there were a lot of us. We hung out long into the night and all just crashed on the roof, where a nice cool breeze made for good sleeping.

Tonight we’re going over to Nicolas’s house for a barbecue. There’s been a lot of fun hanging out lately, so the days are flying by. Just a little over 2 months until I leave Douentza.

Bureaucracy for a raging feminist

2009-03-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

You can’t go long here without Malian bureaucracy (and the easy ways to get around it) strike you. Especially when it comes to dealing with the police or other officials. When I went back to register my motorcycle yesterday, I pulled out my license that I’d bought for 2009, and this very unhelpful guy is like, “Where’s your license for 2008?” I’m trying to ask him why in the world I would have a license for 2008 when it’s 2009 right now and I was following the rules.

A more helpful man explained to me that this cheap registration measure only applied to those motorcycles bought before November 2008 as an incentive to get people with old motorcycles to register them. But conveniently, there was a guy there selling 2008 licenses, and the man signed and dated it October 2008. It just cost me another 6000 to buy the old license. Still, it would be better than paying 200 bucks for the legitimate registration.

Now that I had the new license, Oumar and I had to go back and make new photocopies, then wait for the man in charge to have him take down my motorcycle information. That all passed relatively smoothly, but then when it came to having to pay for the plates or something, everything came grinding to a halt. One man was filling out all of the papers, and there were at least two dozen men waiting to have their papers filled out. People were getting agitated. It was already 5 o’ clock, and everyone (including if not especially the people working) wanted to go home.

Deferential treatment kind of makes me feel uncomfortable, but for once, it was nice. A police officer insisted they get this nice young lady done by the end of the day, and I didn’t complain. I paid my 4000 and was on my way. Unfortunately, I have to go back tomorrow afternoon and pay the rest, since the lady who takes that money wasn’t there anymore.

In the evening, Phil and I went up to the highway for dinner. There, I got in an argument with a man probably looking to be our guide (but who quickly abandoned those ideas, since we said we lived there) over women’s equality. It started out with the motorcycle, as usual. About how my motorcycle is too much for women, about how I should buy a scooter instead. That turned into him telling me how “Westerners think that men and women are the same,” to which I replied, “Yes, because we are.” He went on to explain to me how no, we weren’t equal, and this was evidenced by the fact that out of 45 presidents of the US, the most advanced country on earth, not one has been a woman. This means that men and women aren’t equal. I countered with the fact that out of 44 American presidents, not one was black, so does that mean that black people and white people aren’t equal? He saw my point. I told him he’d insulted me, and he gave me all of his apologies, saying that all he meant was that he thought I would look pretty on a scooter. I told him I had no need for beauty, only for power. He left for an appointment.

I get so riled up. I know I shouldn’t be so argumentative, but I can’t be complacent either. He said he enjoyed talking to me and that next time he would know not to say something like that to a foreigner. Food for thought, I guess.

I did some work on my grammar after dinner, finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven, washed some underwear in a bucket, then went to bed.

Phil apparently might have a lung infection. This is what his doctor told him on the phone from Bamako. He’s started taking antibiotics and will hopefully be better soon. If that’s what the problem is. In any case, he’ll be around here until he gets better.

Complicated feelings

2009-03-02T06:39:00.001-08:00

Market day passed uneventfully, tons of strangers in the courtyard, as usual. I did some work in the morning, finishing up the barebones of the grammar chapter I’m working on. Phil and I met in the market for lunch, then went to his house to escape the public sphere of my courtyard.

There, I made a calendar for the rest of my time here—80 days left. That was both a scary and exciting realization. I’ve been having very mixed feelings lately. So often here, I’m really happy. Yes, it’s hot and I’m far from home and I’m missing the little things we take for granted in the US, but I’m in control of my life here in a way I probably will never be again for at least a very long time. I’m paid to set my own schedule, do my own work, and I’m paid enough to not have to worry about money. I have a motorcycle that I feel free as a bird on, cats, a ram, a house and good friends. I only have two months left and that’s not a lot of time to get the rest of this work done. But at the same time, I only have two months left, and then I get to go home and see my family and friends and Kevin and start a sustainable life in LA that I won’t have to leave in a year. And life will be easy. But it will also be much more financially difficult. So I’m torn.

But enough soul searching. I worked a bit more in the evening, then went over and kicked Phil awake so we could get dinner. I’m taking advantage of the fresh produce while it lasts, so I got a big salad with some fried plantains on it. Delicious. Phil and I chatted a bit after dinner, then it was bed time. I finished my book and slept quite well.

Phil and I went out to the Tango with Nicolas on Saturday night, and he was telling me about how the police have been registering all of the motorcycles in the city lately. I’d not registered my motorcycle when I bought it, since it was incredibly expensive, but I guess they reduced the price to get people to actually do it. Therefore, this morning, Oumar and I went over to the Malian DMV-equivalent to try to get this done.

There was a huge crowd of Malian men with their motorcycles, then me, the white girl in a Dogon skirt. One guy asked me if I had an ID card when I showed him my passport, and I was like, “How in the world would I have a Malian ID card when I’m an American?” Anyhow, he sent us back to the market to make a photocopy of my visa and moto license (vignette).

I was short on time this morning, though, since M. Guindo was going to come over to do some work at 10. Oumar and I decided to go back in the afternoon.

Right on time, M. Guindo came over and we got some work done. I’m always a bit wary of working with him, a) because he’s less introspective about his language and has a hard time explaining differences to me and b) because I think his dialect is more different (in small ways) than anyone is willing to admit, so I’m never sure if what he’s giving me fits in with the rest of my data. But I filled in most of the holes in my grammar chapter, so after writing up the analysis and double checking a couple of things with Ramata, that will be done.

I saw M. le Maire yesterday, since he was passing through Douentza. Now it’s election season here, so his mayor campaign will be keeping him busy. He said he could come for a few days around the 11th, though, which is good. In the meantime, I have enough to keep me busy here.

I went to Phil’s house for what was to be our last lunch before he went back to Ngouma, but unfortunately, he’s sick with a fever, and thus will be here a couple more days recovering. He’ll probably be leaving on Wednesday now, which is when Dave is planning on being back. Who knows when the new girl will get here. It’s good to have friends around, though.

Burgers and ice cream

2009-02-28T02:18:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days have been filled with culinary adventures. On Thursday, Phil and I decided to try and make ice cream. We got all of the necessary ingredients—powdered milk, sugar, vanilla flavoring, rock salt, ice—then set to making it work. I was a little unsure of powdered milk in place of real milk or cream, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. We mixed up a batter and poured it into a couple of clear plastic bags, making sure not to fill them too much so there would be ample surface area. Then these we placed in a small cooler with crushed ice and rock salt.

Then we shook it. We shook it hard. We shook it until our clothes were spattered with salty water and our arms were sore. But when we opened it up, lo and behold, our concoction had frozen into what tasted legitimately like ice cream. We quickly ate it up and made the second batch.

This discovery gives Douentza a whole new leg up. I mean, you can’t even get ice cream in Sevare, you have to go all the way to Bamako. But now? Now ice cream can happen with less money and a bit more work right here in our own courtyards. It was a beautiful moment.

We hung out the rest of the afternoon, playing ladder ball and listening to music. We ate some delicious beans and chege (crushed manioc) for dinner, then I went home. I had kind of a sinus headache and it was hot, so I took a Nyquil and got 10 delicious hours of sleep.

I woke up the next morning to Phil bringing over a kilo of a raw meat to put in the fridge. It was sheep burger day. I showered then spent the morning working on my grammar (having insights about adjectives), then at noon, I packed up the meat and went to Phil’s house.

We drove over to where the Norwegian missionaries live, since apparently they have a meat grinder. I hadn’t seen Katie (the woman) in quite some time, but when we pulled into their compound, she came and greeted us warmly, ushering us into her backyard for water and cake. They have a very nice house, and they need it with four little kids and living here for 8 y ears. Everything is screened in with electricity and running water and homey furnishings. She fed us chocolate cake and coffee cake that tasted amazing. We chatted for a while, and I met her husband, whom I hadn’t met before. Then we asked her about her meat grinder for sheep burgers and she just laughed and showed us inside.

When I pulled out the bag of meat, both she and her cook (a Dogon woman) were like, “Sheep meat, eh? That is filet mignon right there.” I was a bit surprised. They were skeptical about making burgers with filet mignon meat, so we decided to cover all of our bases and grind half of it and make kebabs out of the other half. I guess Phil forgot to ask his butcher that morning what animal the meat was from, but hey, 4 dollars for 2.2 pounds of filet mignon ain’t half bad.

After grinding it, we went back to Phil’s house to finish out the mission. This is when we noticed that his grill we were intending to use had a very wide mesh, good for grilling whole legs of things but bad for grilling burgers. Phil disappeared for a while, so I marinated the kebab pieces, then he reappeared touting a large piece of chain-link fence that apparently his neighbors gave him. We laid it on top of the other grill, but still it seemed a bit wide still. I tried putting the burger on two kebab skewers on top of the metal mess, but it didn’t seem to be grilling all that well over the wood fire.

Finally, we got out the tortilla pan and just put it over the fire, cooking both burgers and the two kebabs all at once. We put the burgers on some bread with slices of tomatoes and sure enough, they were delicious. They weren’t made of sheep, but they were burgers, and they tasted great. I was so full I didn’t even taste the kebabs; Phil ate them both.

After gorging ourselves on a kilo of meat, we went for a hike, across some empty millet fields and up onto some nearby rocks. It was a nice walk, but I was incredibly thirsty by the time we got back since we didn’t bring any water.

We went back to my house then and we both worked on a computer: me on my grammar and Phil on his great American novel. We went to the market around 9:30 for a dinner of salad and fried plantains and fresh yogurt that cost less than a dollar. I’m going to miss that.

And now it’s the last day of February. Hard to believe. Tomorrow is March, and that’s only two calendar months away from when I come home. Time is going quickly now.

Home sweet home

2009-02-26T05:22:00.001-08:00

I made it back to Douentza last night, and for once, the trip was borderline pleasant. I said my goodbyes to Rosemary and her family and made it to the bus station at 7:30 when they told me to be there. To my delight, they took my bags, put them in the bus, and told me I could just get in, as opposed to having to go through the mess of calling out the names of passengers just to board.

Of course the AC wasn’t on, but I’ve learned not to expect that these days. Thankfully, they weren’t blasting loud music either, though. When we pulled up to the bus station in Segou, I looked out the window and saw some young white people that looked familiar. I realized it was the two tourists I’d talked to for a while at the Campagnard after writing my blog entry. They ended up getting on my bus to go to Sevare, so we chatted for a while. I even had the seat next to me empty for most of the ride—amazing.

We got to Sevare around seven, and there my tourist friends got off and Phil got on to come up to Douentza, so we chatted the whole way back. When we got to my house, Ramata was in the courtyard to say hi, and the kittens were scampering everywhere. I can’t believe how big they’ve already gotten. I can’t hold both of them in one hand anymore.  But they seem healthy and happy, so I can’t ask for more.

Phil and I went to the market to eat some dinner around 10:30 or 11, then I went back and went to sleep. Unfortunately, it’s already getting kind of hot. I woke up at 3 in the morning contemplating how I would make it through hot season, deciding instead of getting slapped with an electricity bill at the end of the month for using AC, I would set aside 1000 CFA (2 dollars) a day. That would be much more doable.

It feels really good to be back. I mean, it was also nice being in Bamako, but here is really home now. Driving my motorcycle feels good, as does playing with my kittens and seeing my friends. I’m looking forward to these last couple months to just get work done at my own place and enjoy the environs I’ll soon be leaving.

Penultimate Bamako trip over

2009-02-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning, it's back home to Douentza. I hope the bus trip isn't totally hot and unbearable, since the weather does seem to be getting hotter. As it stands now, I won't be back here until I leave Douentza for good--probably May 8th when Jeff gets to Mali. In the meantime, I am planning on two short trips to Sevare to get some wireless internet and 24/7 AC. I bought my very own webcam today to facilitate Skype-ing even when not at Rosemary's (but with internet fast enough, so that pretty much rules Douentza out).

I had to run a lot of errands today. First, Rosemary, Mohammed and I went to the embassy to cash checks and eat lunch (I had a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake). We ran into Spencer there, and he joined us for lunch. On the way to the embassy, though, there appeared to be some hideous problem on one of Bamako's two bridges crossing the river, so traffic was horrendous. The clutch went out in our taxi and we had to get out and find another one. An hour later, we finally got there and got our business done.

After that, Rosemary and I went to the cyber cafe to print some forms, then I went off to get my bus tickets, picked up something for Ramata, then went back to the see the linguists only to find no one there with a computer, then finished off my errands with a trip to the grocery store. I really wanted to buy my kitties a real litter box, but they didn't sell them. So I bought a box of kitten food instead. It was exhausting running around, but I was glad to be productive.

I'm ready to go back to Douentza. Bamako is nice and all, but I want to see my kittens and drive my motorcycle. I'm also anxious to not overstay my welcome here. I really only intended to stay with Rosemary for 4 nights or so, but then I got sick and the hotel I was thinking about was way more expensive than anticipated, so here I am, a week later. I don't think she minds, but I just don't want to intrude.

That's all until Douentza! Wish me luck on the bus.

Functional button and good health

2009-02-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

As the title implies, the donate button (located in the post below) is now functional. I don't know what was wrong with it, but Kevin figured it out, and now it works.

For the second part of the title, yes, my health seems to have returned. I did my three days of anti-malarials and anti-biotics and now I'm back to normal. With this health in hand, I will return to Douentza Wednesday morning.

Sunday night, I finished the first version of my dictionary. It felt incredibly good. I'm sure there will be mistakes to correct and information to update, but it is a functional dictionary where there wasn't one before!

I went to visit the linguists at the Institut des Langues today and told them about the dictionary. They were thrilled and couldn't wait to get their hands on it. Just that made the work worth it.

Tomorrow I have a few last errands to run, and then I'll hit the road. Then no more Bamako for me until I go home!

Want to help educate the children of Tongo-Tongo?

2009-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

A month and a half ago, I was sitting in my courtyard in Douentza with the elementary school director from Tongo-Tongo. He had to come to town for some official business and just dropped by to say hi. Our conversation turned to the state of education in Mali, which is, in a word, dismal. Schools were only opened in every village as little as ten years ago. If I had been born in Mali, I would not have received even an elementary school education if my parents didn’t have the means to send me to a big town. Even now to get a school or any needed supplies, you have to make a demand to the government that will probably be turned down three, four, fives times, if it’s even accepted at all.

That’s how Tongo-Tongo got its elementary school. M. le Maire proposed the school and was turned down five times before the government agreed to build it. And now the school director has beseeched the government as well, this time for a solar panel, since the school has no electricity. Needless to say, he was turned down.

This got me thinking: if I could give the village this solar panel for their school as a final thank you for all they have done for me, that would not only show my appreciation but would also help their children succeed, the only way the village will begin to pull itself out of poverty. Rather than give a few people a watch or a small monetary donation, I think it would be much better to give a gift that can help the village as a whole, especially its children.

However, I can’t accomplish this on my own. From my research, it seems that a good solar panel (that can power not only lights but fans and TVs and other equipment) costs anywhere between 500-1000 US dollars. My budget is only about $200. I’m not normally one to do this, but I am looking to see if anyone would be able to make a donation to help me get this solar panel for Tongo-Tongo’s elementary school.

My goal is $1000, which will cover the cost of a good solar panel and the transportation costs (almost $200) to get it there. Solar panels are widely used in Mali, and with great success. There’s certainly no shortage of sun. Cloudy days usually only occur during the rainy season, and no classes meet then anyway so the kids can work the fields. Aside from the start-up capital needed to purchase the panel, there are no costs of running it afterward (assuming no major repairs are needed, and I’ve never heard of anything of the sort). They are readily available, even in Douentza, though I will make my purchase in Sevare, where there is a wider selection and lower prices.

So what will this do for the kids? Look at these pictures. The kids who aren’t immediately next to the windows are studying in terrible lighting. And in the evenings, the teachers are preparing by flashlight or lamplight in the dirt room next to mine. In April and May, still school months, temperatures are consistently above 100 degrees, and the students are sitting in a concrete room with 100 other kids. Even simple fans to move around the air, I have to believe that the children would learn better. Currently the school doesn’t even have an overhead projector because there’s no electricity. Their materials are limited to a blackboard and battery-operated radios.

Do these solar panels really have the power for more than lights? Well, I don’t have official statistics, but my co-worker Kirill lived and worked in a guest house in Songho, whose lights, electricity, fans, refrigerators, and air conditioning were all powered by solar energy. Solar panels could meet all of an elementary school’s needs.

This village has done so much for me, housing me for free, sharing their time and language with me, showing me nothing but kindness. Rather than leaving money or small individual gifts that are quickly unaccounted for or frittered away, I believe this solar panel has to potential to benefit the village in the long term. Even small contributions can help. So if you want to help out (and please don’t feel obligated to), let me know, and I’ll tell you what to do next. I’ll probably have my parents collect the funds and wire me the sum all at once.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please let me know. I have next to no experience fund raising, and I don’t mean to turn my blog into a request for money, but I was really taken with this idea. Check out the photos of the village (I know the middle school looks even worse, but that is way out of my budget), send me ideas, and let me know if you’re willing to help. Thanks in advance!

Sicker, but now better?

2009-02-21T06:15:00.000-08:00

I ended up staying at the Campagnard for about 5 hours. I ate way too much, then chatted with a Peace Corps guy and couple of tourists.

When I went back to Rosemary's house, I got a bit of work done, then realized I was feeling a bit ill. I took my temperature, and it was back up to 102. I decided that was it, it was time to go to the doctor and figure it out once and for all. This time I went by myself, since Rosemary and her husband were watching a movie and I didn't want to disturb them.

I made it back to the clinic and was ushered to the office of a different doctor. At first I was disappointed, since I'd liked the other doctor so much, but in hindsight, it's better to get a second opinion. I explained my symptoms all over again, this time including some chills, and I showed him my burn too. He didn't seem as concerned as I was hoping about the burn, but insisted I get more blood tests than the ones the day before.

The technician was great. He took two vials of blood and it barely hurt at all. While I was sitting there feverish, waiting for my results, some sketchy Libyan guy started talking to me, even though he didn't speak French or English, and he asked for my phone number. I told him I didn't have a phone, praying that no one would call me right then. He gave me his, as if I would call him so we could have great conversations. Just once, just once I would like to go to the hospital without someone trying to pick me up.

Anyhow, I got my results and took them to show the doctor. My platelets were low and my something else was up. He concluded that I probably have a bout of malaria again (even though there were no parasites), and an infection to boot. I got a prescription for anti-malarials and antibiotics (the same pharmacist wasn't there, thank god), and I went home.

I've been taking the meds for the last 24 hours now, and I'm feeling better. I still had a little fever yesterday evening, but these things don't go away instantly. The drug cocktail makes me feel a bit nauseous (not surprising), and I woke up at 4AM to dry heave last night, but hey, this time I have a real bathroom to do it in, so bring it on.

Jeremy and his brother and host family members came over in the evening yesterday to chat for a while, then I went out with Rosemary's family to Le Relax for dinner. Still feeling a bit nauseous, I just got some French onion soup that proved delicious.

In work related news, I sent Jeff the spreadsheet last night. Hurray! I'm sure there will be changes made to it between now and the indefinite future, but it's a start. And my dictionary proper is moving right along as well--down to about 100 words to edit.

New pictures (and link)

2009-02-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

First off, check out the new pangolin link that replaced the Wikipedia one. Not that I don't love Wikipedia, but it's been up for a while, and the new site is by people who also love pangolins. So check it out.

Okay, now new photos:

Mali On My Own

More Tongo-Tongo

Unidentifiable fevers--my favorite

2009-02-19T05:42:00.001-08:00

It seems that travelling makes me sick. Or at least I get sick when I travel (though I’ll claim no causal connection). In any case, I’ve had a low fever (99-102 degrees) ever since I’ve gotten here. It hasn’t stopped me from getting things done, though.

But let me take it back to the beginning. After a wonderful night’s sleep on Monday night, I got up on Tuesday morning to go get my research authorization. Rosemary came with, since apparently M. Guindo, the director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technique is her colleague. He was a charming man and got my research authorization (and by that I mean Jeff’s ) executed without any problems.

Afterwards, Rosemary and I went up to Amandine to wait for a friend of mine, a Dutch linguist named Victoria who works on Malian sign language. She’s a very bubbly and passionate person, and it’s hard to be in a bad mood around her. She came with the president of Mali’s deaf society, and she carried on almost all of the lunch conversations in both sign and English. Very impressive. She wants to mount a project to study sign languages in Dogon country, so we discussed those prospects.

After lunch, we went home and I powered through a lot of work on the dictionary. Hamed really wanted to watch a movie that evening, so we put on Willow with Rosemary’s LCD projector and watched it “big screen”. I was beginning to feel more feverish at this point, and finally took my temperature, which was over 100. I Skyped a little bit and then went to bed.

Yesterday morning, there were more errands to run. First, Rosemary and I went to the Embassy, where we both had mail waiting for us. I got three big boxes full of clothes for my villagers that took extra help to get outside and into a taxi. We went home to drop off our mail, but Mohammed wasn’t there, so we left the boxes with the neighbors and set out on foot for Amandine.

There we had another lunch date, this time with Spencer (the Fulbrighter I had yet to meet) and two Peace Corps volunteers, Tiffany and Alec. They were all extremely friendly and pleasant individuals, which made for a wonderful lunch. To top it all off, I had a banana split smothered in whipped cream. I certainly can’t find that in Douentza.

I was feeling a little feverish on the walk back and immediately hit my bed for a nap. Unfortunately, I felt no better when I got up and had a temperature of 102. That evening, I decided it was time to go to the doctor. My neck has been stiff, so I was paranoid about meningitis (though in all likelihood, the stiff neck is just due to the 12 hour bus ride).

Rosemary was kind enough to accompany me to the doctor. Neither of us had particularly high hopes for Malian clinics, but we went to the one the embassy recommended, a place called Clinique Pasteur. We were both very pleasantly surprised. The clinic was clean and nicely decorated, and the doctor, a young guy by the name of Dr. Toure, I believe, seemed very thorough and knowledgeable (and not to mention friendly—an important character trait in a doctor). I explained my symptoms (fever, fatigue, stiff neck, no problems with appetite or anything else stomach related). It turns out when he took my temperature, I no longer had a fever, but he said he’d do a blood test for malaria just to be safe. He sent me down the hall to the lab, where the technician used a nice new needle to give me a finger prick. Twenty minutes later, the technician hands me my results in a very official envelope with my name printed (as in computer printed) and everything. We took it back to the doctor, and he told me they were negative. He said the most likely cause of my fever is the heat and fatigue of working too much (which I have been doing), and prescribed me paracetamol and an anti-fatigue medicine.

He took us over to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist was sitting playing a computer game on a computer with Obama on the desktop. We got to talking about Obama, and he said something I hadn’t heard before. He said he likes and respect McCain too because he was a very gracious loser. I thought that was interesting. He spoke highly of Americans, as most people do here, which always makes you feel good. I got my medicines, and we took off. The whole visit cost me only 50 bucks (which I should get reimbursed for).

As Rosemary and I were getting into the taxi to go home, the pharmacist runs out and invites me to a party on Saturday night, “where there will be French people and we can converse”. I’m not going to go, but it was a nice invitation anyway.

I don’t know what’s up with the French and liking to drink their medicines, but my paracetamols are dissolving tablets like Alka-Seltzer, and the anti-fatigue medicine are a liquid individually packaged in little glass vials.

I colored in the picture of Moses in my Great Lawyers Coloring Book and went to bed.

This morning, I found that I still had a slight fever, though only 99.8. I took a paracetamol and set to work, finishing up the lexical spreadsheet edits. Now I just have to analyze the few problem words I recorded and I can send that off to Jeff. My dictionary is not quite at that stage, though I have less than 1000 words left. Just a day’s work.

As I was working, I decided I should check on my burn, which is taking an awfully long time to heal. Sure enough, it didn’t look real great. When Rosemary and Mohammed got back from the Embassy, she gave me some hydrogen peroxide, which sapped some of the infection out of it. I will reapply later. I was stupid to not show the wound to the doctor yesterday, but if I’m still feeling bad this evening, I’m going to go back, because the fever could be connected with the infected burn, in which case I should get some antibiotics ASAP.

In any case, I’m at Le Campagnard right now, eating a delicious pizza (after already eating a warm goat cheese toast salad) and using their wireless. It’s an expensive meal, but well worth it. Pictures will be up shortly.

In the big city

2009-02-16T12:14:00.000-08:00

About an hour ago, I arrived safely in the modern arms of Bamako. This time, I wasn't as startled by its development. This is either because I'm used to the comings and goings or I've finally realized that Bamako just isn't developed. That being said, when I got to Rosemary's house, I took a hot shower and the whole bus ride was worth it.

The bus ride wasn't too bad. I took the Africa Tours bus, which left right out of Douentza as opposed to coming from Gao. They told me to show up at 6 AM, so at 5:30, I woke up to the sound of donkeys and roosters battling the muezzins for who was the most effective alarm clock. Salif drove me into town in the half-light of early morning, and of course, we proceeded to sit there for an hour, since no bus in Mali can actually leave on time.

At first, I was afraid it was going to be a long trip, since the bus stopped to pick up people 3 times before arriving in Sevare, regardless of the fact that there were no seats. To make matters worse, I had a mother with a two-year-old on her lap sitting next to me who would regularly spill into my space. They spoke Tommo-So, though, and while I didn't speak to them at all, I reveled in the fact of understanding some.

The bus ride went smoother from Sevare on, with fewer random stops and fewer people in the aisle. In the end, we got in about 12 hours after we left--not bad for a Malian bus ride.

Driving along the freeway in Mali, you get a very clear picture of what the social problems are. Everything few kilometers, there's a billboard against overloaded trucks, AIDS, excision, and myriad other issues. I often wonder if anyone actually does or can read them, though, if they're effective at all. Well, at least they try.

A few other tidbits from the village and Douentza. When I was there, I got my first taste of baobab fruit, "monkey bread". It's not particularly good. Hard and dry and kind of tasteless, but it felt pretty authentic eating it. Also in the village, I saw the tiniest lamb I have ever seen, a little brown and white thing scarcely bigger than my kittens (who, by the way, are back to their old chipper selves). I was able to pick it up with one hand and considered stealing it. Finally, guinea fowl always make me laugh, just from their ridiculous proportions. If you haven't seen them, do a Google image search. On my way back from the internet on Saturday, there were eight guinea fowl evely spaced up on a wall, all facing the road and all clucking furiously. I don't know what the convocation was about, but I wish I'd had my camera at that moment. It was hilarious.

Anyhow, I have many errands to run while in Bamako, which I will describe in detail tomorrow. For now, it's off to make some phone calls and go to bed.

Off to the big city, soon

2009-02-14T03:08:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentine’s Day from Mali! It’s not very romantic here, let me tell you. Just another day.

This is just a quick post to say that the kitties are doing slightly better and that I probably won’t be at the internet again until I get to Bamako, insha’allah, Monday evening. Between now and then, I have a lot more dictionary editing to do, recordings to make, and bus rides to endure.

Come Bamako, there will be new photos and hopefully a dictionary to peruse.

Sick kitties

2009-02-13T03:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve had better days than the ones leading up to today. Late Tuesday afternoon, I saw that my kittens were still not feeling well. Whereas before they would scamper around and nearly attack you when meal time came, now they had no interest in eating and just moped around dejectedly. I was with Phil at the time, and I decided we should go to the veterinary pharmacy down the road and see what was the matter.

I explained the situation to the man behind the counter, and he pulled out some shots they should get. His younger colleague accompanied us back to the house with them and we found the kittens. Pili was the first up. I held her while the vet went to give her the injection in her nape. At first she was fine, but then she struggled and cried so much that she freed herself from our hands and fell to the ground, the needle still in her neck, yowling and convulsing. I thought for sure she was going to die right then. The vet insisted it was okay, that the medicine was just strong, but I remained (and remain) unconvinced. She lie there in a catatonic state for a while, and even now, her back right leg doesn’t work like it used to, so she limps around. I don’t know whether she hurt her leg or she hurt her spine, but I hope it’s just the leg. Sami responded much better to the shots.

I was a mess all night, alternately blaming myself and blaming the vet (who probably doesn’t know anything about small animals, only livestock) for what happened, but generally just feeling miserable about the state of small animals in my house. Phil tried to convince me that it would be okay, that when I came back from the village, Pili would be back to normal. I tried my best to believe it.

The next morning at 7, Minkailou and I set off for Tongo-Tongo. We took his (Jeff’s) Yamaha DT that used to be with Kirill. It’s a much more powerful dirt bike than my Star. We made it to the base of the cliff in good time and found the valley carpeted with greenery—fields of onions, garlic and tobacco interspersed with overburdened papaya and banana trees. And it smelled amazing.

We got to the village around 10 AM and the usual slow trickle of villagers noticing I’m there began. Ramata’s mother brought us lunch, and afterwards M. le Maire took me on a tour of the village, showing me various things we’d discussed while working on the dictionary. We walked by two men weaving cotton cloth with an old-fashioned loom, down a little alley where women were spinning cotton thread, into a courtyard with niches built into the wall called ‘sinuge’ (see-noo-gay), and finally over to M. le Maire’s mother’s house. We ducked through the low doorway into the dark room filled to the brim with calabashes and buckets and sacks of who knows what. As soon as I was seated on the mud-brick bed, M. le Maire procured the millet beer. I was sitting in the middle of the millet beer factory, essentially.

We talked and drank and then M. le Maire’s 3-year-old daughter Jumare, the cutest kid in the world, came in and sat by me. I wasn’t sure if I was appalled or amused when M. le Maire gave Juma a small calabash of millet beer. How very Dogon.

After we left there, he showed me the new cereal bank that they’d just built and we stopped by a group of men splitting stone bricks with mallet and chisel. Our final stop was the mayor’s office, where he wrote up a birth certificate for someone, even though he’s not the mayor.

I am so impressed by M. le Maire. He constantly is working to help his village, writing petition after petition to the government for schools and other projects, working as the village doctor of sorts, taking care of his family, helping me, and doing official duties all at once. But what is most remarkable of all is his humility. The man for whom he was writing the birth certificate called him a doctor, and M. le Maire simply replied, “I’m not a doctor. I’m a farmer.”

I spent most of the afternoon after that reading ‘Three Cups of Tea’ and feeling inspired. I talked to some little kids for a while in broken Tommo-So, which was cute. The rest of the day progressed slowly until I went to bed around 9:30 and slept wonderfully.

As usual, animals like to stop in front of my door specifically to make whatever announcements they have to make. That morning, it was an over-zealous rooster who was particularly excited about it being morning. I lay in bed and dreamed of KFC.

After breakfast, M. le Maire came with the old man so we could find the last words we hadn’t found in Douentza. I love watching the old man talk, and I wish I could just pick his brain. He was born around 1920 and was already 40 when Mali gained its independence. He very nearly predates Islam in the area, which is a recent addition in Dogon country. He must know so much.

M. le Maire himself was leaving that day for a funeral in Ibisa, and all the work I have to do requires my computer now, so Minkailou and I decided to just hit the road. We left after lunch and made it to the cliff around 3. Rounding the corner, the smell of onions and garlic hits you before you even see the fields. Once on the ground, those scents mingled with the musky smell of tobacco and damp earth. On our trip back, we passed a man working in his fields who flagged us over and gave us 10 huge tomatoes, just because. As always, I am amazed by the generosity of those who have so little.

I was hoping to find my kittens bounding about playfully when I got back, but I’m afraid there was no change in their condition. Pili was still limping and neither of them were particularly energetic. Pili will eat little pieces of meat now, but Sami is still not eating. I threw my bag in my room and called Oumar to go with me to the vet, the actual vet I had heard of, not the pharmacy.

I bundled my kittens in a sweater and got on the back of the motorcycle with them. We found the place, again mainly for livestock because no one cares about small animals here, and went in. It turned out that the boss there is actually the boss of the pharmacy, so he told us we needed to go back there and try to sort it out with them first, and only if they couldn’t do anything would he intervene. Discouraged, we went back to the pharmacy, and it was the same guy there who had given my cats their shots.

I told him the cats were not better and if anything worse. He smugly told me that it was I who requested to stop the shots (which I did, it was supposed to be a series of 3, but I didn’t want him anywhere near my kittens after that), and I sort of let him have it about messing up Pili. Basically, I was a wreck, trying to keep my cool but not doing a good job of it. He assured me that it would be okay, that Pili was limping because she’s small and she fell and she’ll get better, and we need to resume the treatment. Seeing no other option, I consented and went out front to wait for the shots to be over. While fuming outside, some other guy, maybe affiliated with the vet, kept trying to talk to me about how much I liked my cats and about how he used to catch and eat cats as a kid. Thank you, sir, that makes me feel much better right now.

While pacing, I sauntered up to my motorcycle and burned the hell out of my leg on the motor. I was in the most terrible of moods when I got back to the house, feeling generally awful about my cats. Luckily, Braxton, another PCV, got into town yesterday with his family, and he invited me out for a couple beers. It was just what I needed, and by the end of the night, when Antony also showed up, I was in a perfectly fine mood.

Today, the kittens might be slightly better. Pili is still limping, but she’s eating a bit, and for the first time in days, she played a little bit. Sami is still the same, not eating, but drinking milk at least. They’re both incredibly needy and want to be next to me all the time, which is fine by me. I just wish I could make them feel better and that Mali had real vets for small animals.

Night walks

2009-02-10T03:29:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, I’m off to the village for a couple of days. As usual, I’m dreading it, but it’s more the overcoming the inertia of being in Douentza than actually being there. I have a game plan of what I need to do when I’m there and a good book to read, so I’ll be fine. More than anything, I don’t really want to be separated from my computer, because then I can’t make any progress editing the dictionary (even though I’m going to the village to get some words for the dictionary). Now I get anxious if I’m not working on it. It’s over half edited now, and a lot of my Bamako time will be working on it still, but I just want it to be done so I can move on to something new.

Last night after dinner, Phil and I went for a walk. We walked out of town down a path with crumbling bridges and deep sand pits, past fields that smelled remarkably like French fries, and down to the city’s water tower. The moon was full, so we didn’t even need flashlights. It was really peaceful. A cool wind was blowing and all around us a chorus of some unknown night creature beeped like a dozen time bombs waiting to go off. It was nice to go for a leisurely stroll without children screaming “toubab” at you or motorcycles nearly taking you down at every turn.

I’ll be back on Friday with stories. Hopefully good ones.

Posh corps

2009-02-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

I had a fun weekend with the Peace Corps folk this weekend. But first, Saturday afternoon, I went over to Nicolas’s house for lunch. He cooked a delicious meal of fish with vegetables and homemade tomato sauce. Whatever his French organization is called has a really nice house (by Douentza standards). It has a kitchen with a sink and an actual bathroom! Anyhow, we hung out for a little while, then I headed off to the internet.

There, I ran into Phil, who said that Dave and Dan, the new guy, had just gotten into town, so I headed over to their house. Dan is replacing Derek, a volunteer who went home, in Boni, so he officially belongs to our Douentza crew. He’s a nice guy. His self-described interests are “rock climbing and drinking beer.” We hung out for a little bit, then I went home to get some work done before meeting up with them again for dinner and drinks. They all collectively like Oumar, so we invited him out with us for some beers.

It was extremely windy and dusty on Saturday, but luckily, it brought some cooler air with it. I was all settled in for a great night’s sleep when I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and threw up everything I’d eaten that day. Maybe the fish didn’t sit right. I felt fine afterwards and went back to sleep.

Sunday came around and I achieved some work in the morning. After lunch, I braved the market to make it to the Peace Corps house to see if they were there. (The phone network was so bad that I couldn’t get in touch with anyone.) Indeed they were, and Dave had just gotten a DVD from home that he wanted to watch, and I’m the only one with electricity or a computer (because I’m part of the Posh Corps). Consequently, we all caravanned back across the market to my house and watched Appaloosa, some old west movie with Viggo Mortensen (however you spell his name). It was surprisingly good.

We hung out for the rest of the day, drinking beer and playing ladder ball, until I went home at around 9. I wanted to get work done, but I was exhausted, and just read some of my book and went to sleep.

Dave and Dan left today to go to Senegal, but Phil’s still around. I’ll go say hi after this. I’ll probably be going to the village on Wednesday and then to Bamako on Monday. Hard to believe it’s almost the middle of February.

Back to steamy nights...

2009-02-06T02:50:00.000-08:00

Last night, it was hot. It was hot in that way I’d forgotten about, that heat that crushes you as you lie in bed praying for sleep. And the worst part about it is that I know it’s only going to get worse. I’m still hoping that the rest of February won’t be this bad, that maybe this is a simple heat spell, but I’m losing faith in that fantasy. And then of course my kittens performed their daily morning race around my room, waking me up at 7.

The work on the dictionary is going faster now that I’ve gotten into a groove. I’m feeling more positive about it in general, taking time to feel proud of what I’ve done as opposed to beating myself up about inevitable mistakes.

The garden is looking great here. We have more things growing than I even knew about. Of course, the lettuce is in great shape and I’ve been eating all the salad I can stomach, but then we have one papaya well on its way, a few tomatoes, some little cabbages, some corn sprouts, and Oumar just planted carrots. I enjoy watching the garden—I wish I could have one when I go home. I guess when my cowry-fortune comes true and I become a “boss,” I’ll get a house with a big yard and plant all sorts of good stuff. And in the meantime, I can at least more regularly attend farmers’ markets. Mali is just one big farmers’ market.

Editing is a slow, painful process

2009-02-04T03:17:00.000-08:00

As planned, Dave and I went out to dinner with his boss on Monday night. I was more physically exhausted than I could ever remember being, too tired to even take a nap, but I made myself get up and go. I’m glad I did. Mike was extremely nice and the food was the best I’ve had since I left Bamako. It was my first time eating at one of the tourist places in Douentza, and it turns out, they’re not bad. Pumpkin or squash soup, rice with some meaty sauce, fresh papaya coated in sugar and orange juice... plus Mike brought a bottle of wine. All in all, it was a great night.

I was so sore yesterday I could hardly move, and today is not a whole lot better. Since it’s just me again in Douentza, yesterday was pretty low-key. I finished my jigsaw puzzle (except for one piece in the dead center that just happens to be part of Minnesota. I think Sami carried it away somewhere), starting editing my dictionary, took a nap, and made a salad. The dictionary editing is much slower than I was expecting. It’s very tedious, but I’m looking forward to the final product.

My kittens continue to be total terrors. Like clockwork, around 7 every morning, they wake up and start tearing around my room at lightning speed, knocking things over, clawing up my mosquito net, crunching over plastic bags, etc. They are awfully cute, but we are just not on the same energy page at that time in the morning.

Cliffs and salsa

2009-02-02T08:46:00.001-08:00

This weekend ushered in February, and it ushered it in well. Saturday, I finished the elicitation for the dictionary. It was such a load off of my shoulders. That night, I bought beers for M. le Maire, Oumar and Dave, and we celebrated its completion. Market day rolled around, and I didn’t have to get out of bed at 7:20. Unfortunately, I’ve now been programmed to do that, so I woke up then anyway, but I lay in bed and didn’t worry about having to be anywhere.

In the morning, I realized I had a few more words to look for that Jeff had added after the fact, so I did that. I started to get a hankering to make salsa, so Dave and I went to the market and picked up the goods. I made two kinds—regular and mango—and that night, I shredded some chicken, mixed in taco seasoning Dave had, bought some beans and lettuce, and had a veritable taco salad. It was extremely delicious. Unfortunately, such a supply of vegetables is not going to last much longer. Once cold season is over (and it basically is), the vegetables dwindle back down to next to nothing, namely little onions (shallots) and cabbage.

This morning, M. le Maire went back to the village, so Dave and I decided to get out of Douentza and do something fun. I drove us up to a village called Bota (Mbota?), ten kilometers up the road to Timbuktu. The village is situated at the bottom of these rocky spires, the faces of which rise up at a 90 degree angle to the ground like someone just came and sliced them off. There are rocky debris fields around them, though, so we went to climb up. Dave had done it before and is quite a rock climber, so he scampered up the rocks like it was his job, leaving me wheezing and stumbling behind him.

The first part of the ascent was just a steep rocky hill, which then gave way to bigger rocks and tall grasses that were generous with their burrs. After that, it got woody and the boulders got bigger, so that much more climbing and much less walking was involved. At the end, I was frankly quite scared of falling to my death, since if you took a wrong turn and somehow fell, it was a straight drop hundreds of meters down.

But I did not fall and am here to tell about it. We climbed around a ledge on the face of the cliff where you can see all of the plains and Douentza stretching out flat and barren below you. Whereas a city in America would be distinguished from the surroundings by buildings or clear roads, you pick out Douentza because it has more trees than anywhere else—you can’t even see the buildings. I could see all the way across and onto the plateau behind Douentza, where presumably my village is located. It was a breathtaking view, quite worth the strenuous climb.

After that, we started to head back and stopped in a shady crevice for lunch: peanut butter (real Jiffy PB from the US) and banana sandwiches. After so much physical activity, it tasted delicious. I was dying of exhaustion on the way back, my legs screaming at me for doing something other than sitting around working on linguistics. On top of that, the shady side of the cliff was now the other side, so we had to stumble down a rocky slope with no shade whatsoever.

I just got back before this and took the most satisfying bucket bath of my life. The silver lining to cold season ending is that bathing is pleasant again. That’s about it, though. I guess the Peace Corps boss is in town tonight, and I get to bum along and get a free dinner. I’m not complaining.

One day til freedom

2009-01-31T05:52:00.000-08:00

The last few days have been a busy mix of fun and work, and the work has paid off. I have about 200 words left to review, something easily achievable by dinner time. Then my work is on my own time, cleaning up entries, organizing, double checking some words with Ramata, and changing it from a spreadsheet into a usable document. Needless to say, I’m quite glad to have reached this stage.

Dave has been in town for the last few days, so when I’m not working, we’ve been hanging out. He even cooked some delicious pasta with homemade tomato sauce yesterday—it was nice to not eat Malian food for one meal.

The weather is starting to turn hot again. I even turned my fan on last night while I was sleeping, but it was only so I could simulate the feeling of being cold and needing to use a blanket. I’ve heard conflicting accounts of what this means. According to most people, it’s just going to keep getting hotter from here, but yet at the same time, I’m also told that February is still chilly. I don’t know if this is what they call chilly, but it is anything but that.

The vet came over to take a look at the rams today. He gave them some shot, I’m not sure what for, and we bought some packets of vitamins to give them next week. Prince is so cute. He’s allowed to just walk around the courtyard sometimes, so there are days when I look up from my computer and see him in the doorway staring at me with a vacant look on his little rabbit face. I’ve taken to calling him the Bunny Sheep.

The kittens are as energetic as ever—they are currently mauling my sandal. Sami is a picky eater and will only eat smoked fish that have been moistened, whereas Sami will practically unhinge her jaw and swallow huge hunks of raw meat whole. I don’t know if Sami hasn’t grown proper teeth yet or if she’s just being a brat or what.

In general, I’m quite happy. Especially when I’m driving my motorcycle down the main street, past the mosques, the men in their flowing boubous, the women swaddled with babies, for all the loneliness and homesickness I feel, I’m glad to be here right now.

Actually having fun

2009-01-30T06:21:00.000-08:00

Just so you all don't think that I've forsaken Pangolin Watch and will never post again, I will post properly tomorrow. The last few days have been packed to the gills with work and hanging out, since Dave has been in town. If all goes well, the dictionary revision will be done tomorrow night, and then it's clean up and organization from there. All right!

Humbling generosity

2009-01-27T06:14:00.000-08:00

Today, I went over to Fatima’s house, the woman whose family made my ring and the camel saddle for my brother. It was just to say hi and also to have a small ring-guard made to keep my main one from falling off. She had come over last week to tell me she’d moved, so M. le Maire escorted me to her new house up towards the hills.

As usual, she greeted me with incredible warmth and ushered me into her new house, where some family members were working on dying pieces of leather. She disappeared for awhile, then came back with a friend of hers who wanted to meet me, Urukiatoum. When she sat back down, she handed me a little package wrapped in lined notebook paper. It was a beautiful hand-worked silver pendant on a hand-made silver chain, a present for me.

I am always blown away by her generosity and genuine warmth. It is both humbling and inspiring. Her family is of low caste, leather workers and silver smiths, but she gives me gifts whenever she sees me, to me who comes from the land of plenty. You could say that it’s just so I’ll keep coming back and giving her business, but I don’t think so. She is just a beautiful person.

Next time I go to pick up my little ring, I’m going to give her one of my necklaces from the United States. I want her to be able to keep something to remind her of me the way her gifts will always remind me of her and talented, hard-working family.

A veritable animal husbandman

2009-01-26T06:02:00.000-08:00

January is drawing to a close, as is my work on the dictionary. I figure 5 more days of 500 words each, and it’ll be done. I’m looking forward to the break. For the last 12 days straight, I’ve worked for at least 5 or 6 hours on it. I could use a weekend.

We got a new little ram yesterday. He’s no Bean, but he is a textbook “fine specimen”: pure white, long ears, dangly neck waddles, sturdy build. We got him for the same price we sold the mother for, so I’m back to my original investment. If he accrues some value (which he should, barring any more acts of God), I could break even. I named him Prince, since his little horns look like a crown. Oumar’s ram, whom I’ve named Frank, seems happy to have a friend. At least he bellows a lot less now. Oumar let them loose around the courtyard for a while this morning, and they both stuck their heads into the house to say hi.

Yesterday was market day, and my stomach was not happy about it. Well, I figure my stomach didn’t care either way about the market, but something greatly displeased my digestion. I spent the morning in my room looking at my grammar in despair (there is so much to do) and napping with the kittens, but by the afternoon, I was back and at ‘em. I think maybe the dried fish we feed to the kittens made me sick, having it on my fingers, that is. At one point, I broke open one of the little fish to feed to the kittens, and about a half a dozen squirming insects spilled out. That was first class gross.

The kittens are otherwise as pesky as ever and looking well-nourished. It seems that the only time they’re awake and sitting in one place is when they’re using the litter box. They’re little terrors, but I love them.

Warren seems to be gone. I haven’t seen him in days, so either he crawled into my suitcase and died somewhere, disturbing me even in death, he’s vacated the premises. The kittens are hardly a threat right now (though they ate the thoraces off of some flying termite things yesterday), but I guess the wiring in Warren’s little brain sensed feline and told him to flee. Plus ten points for my kittens.

A female police officer?

2009-01-23T06:23:00.001-08:00

Work is going quite well. I’m over a third done with the editing process, and now that I don’t have the distraction of my Peace Corps friends here, I get a lot of work done during the day, then have time in the evening to myself (and my kittens). The night before last, I read all of Herman Hesse’s “Demian”, which was a very good little book. I’m reading Plato’s dialogues now to get up to speed on my classics.

Sami and Pili are proceeding very nicely in their litter training. They know that sand is where they are to pee, so they use the make-shift litter box in my room and pee outside the door of the main house. Pili got confused yesterday and peed in a little spot of sand that was in the house, but that’s an understandable mistake. They’re eating well—milk, dried fish, and table scraps—and sleep peacefully in their basket at night.

Oumar had gone up to Boni a couple of days ago, and he brought back a bag full of delicious carrots today. I’ve spent all morning crunching on those and a cane of sugar that M. le Maire bought at the market.

I’ve been inducted into the Ouologuem family affairs. M. le Maire told me just a little while ago, “Now that we’re family, you can be part of the family discussions,” and proceeded to tell me how Ramata had told him last night that she wants to train for the police force. Her father was not particularly jazzed about this idea, not only because of the physical danger but also because it is still a society where being a female police officer would be hard. Like any good father, he doesn’t want to see his daughter face hardship. I told him I understood that completely, but that also if anyone could be a female police officer, it was Ramata, with her strength of character and ability to stand up to anyone and anything. He nodded thoughtfully and told me how he had particularly raised her at his side, never raising a hand against her (unlike his other children). She is kind of his pet or his protégée. I didn’t want to voice my own opinions too strongly, namely that if Ramata wanted to be a police officer, she has the strength to and should do it. But I agreed with him that all we want for her is the best and to see her doing something that fits her character, since that is surely not one of a subservient housewife.

It is sometimes hard for me to both share my opinions and present my culture and to not interfere or meddle in Mali’s business. I’ve been inducted into the family, but I will never be an integral part of it.

Of presidents and pancakes

2009-01-21T06:01:00.001-08:00

For all of you who commented on the gender of calico cats (a fact that I had heard), you will feel vindicated to know that Sami (formerly Samba) is indeed a girl. The people at the house just told me it was it was a boy and I never looked again. I checked it out though, and there are definitely girl parts. So now I have little sisters, who are acclimating quite nicely to life in the house. I’ve taken on the role of their mother; they come crying to be picked up when I enter the room and fall asleep in my lap while I’m working. At night, I put them in their little mosquito net enclosure and they sleep peacefully. Except that yesterday morning, I let them out while I went to brush my teeth, and both of them peed on my bed. Potty training has started today. They’re doing a good job of peeing in the sand outside of the door when we’re in the big room of the house, and I’m going to try to fashion them a little box for my room.

It was fun having Dave and Phil over. We got a big feast of a couple chickens and beans and bread. Dave’s gone to Bamako, but I went over to their house the next day and made banana pancakes with Phil. We hung out all day, and he just watched movies on my computer while I was working. In the afternoon, we went over to someone’s house with a TV and watched the inauguration, all voiced over into French. If you really concentrated, though, you could hear the original English. It was really surreal watching all of the footage of the US while sitting in this dirt-floored thatched shack with a bunch of Malians. A ton of people were there watching, and we were all quite moved. M. le Maire keeps declaring that Obama is the president of the world. There is so much Obama hype here. I wondered what it must have been like watching the inauguration speech as a Malian, as Obama gave messages to “poor countries” and “Muslim countries,” but everyone seemed cheery.

It’ll be a couple of weeks hanging out by myself (or with Nicolas) now, since Dave will be in Bamako for 2 weeks and Phil went to his village for 2 or 3 weeks. I’m feeling really busy with all of this work now, but it should be done in about 2 weeks (perfect timing). I’m not sure how long M. le Maire will be able to stay, though—probably until Sunday. Then I’ll need to go back to the village once more to fill in some words and hopefully get him back for another week before heading to Bamako myself.

I now officially have less than 4 months until I come home.

A message from Sami: lkeeeeeeexxDDA.

Itty bitty kitty committee

2009-01-19T07:16:00.000-08:00

My life is once again full of little scraps of life. Last night, my kitten quest was satisfied. Ramata’s friend Sidiki heard about some family that had kittens and didn’t want them, so we went over to investigate. Sure enough, back hidden behind a mattress and some crates were 4 or 5 kittens that ran for cover as soon as we came in. I managed to scoop up one, a little girl kitten, but since I was looking for a male (easier to fix here), I let her go and we said we’d come back later when the kittens had calmed down. An hour or two later, we went back again, and somehow I managed to scoop up the same little kitten. At that point, I figured I was probably meant to have her if she was the one I kept catching. She’s adorable—mostly white with a little calico coloring around her forehead and ears. I named her Pili [pìlǐy], meaning ‘little white one’ in Tommo-So. I’d caught a glimpse of a beautiful little calico kitten, who I figured was male, so I said I’d come back again later on and try to take him to. I figured Pili could use a friend.

I wrapped up her tiny body in my scarf and carried her home. She was quite calm all the way, only crying when we got to the house. We got her some disgusting meat scraps (fat, stomach, etc.) and curdled milk at the market. I don’t think she knows how to eat too well yet, but she licked the milk off of my finger with her sandpaper tongue. Curiously enough, she really enjoyed the pasta we were eating for dinner, so we gave her a small dish of that.

After dinner, Sidiki and I went back for a third time to the house across the neighborhood. I guess his friend Safiatum lives there, a nice young woman, probably 19 years old. She told me I was welcome to come by at any time, and I think she meant it. Apparently the mother was back behind the crates with the kittens this time, so to my dismay, they chased her out with a broom (she shot out like a rocket, tail puffed to the highest degree) and scared out the kittens. My intuition was right, and the little calico was a boy. I fell in love and decided to take him too.

He was more scared on the way back, digging his little claws through my shirt and into my chest. When we got him home, he pretty much went and hid instantly until he found his sister. I named him Samba, the name of an adorable little kid in the village.

I took them into my room last night, where the promptly went and hid under my bookshelf, huddled together for warmth and security. I’d created a little house for them under a mosquito net, but they did not want to come out of hiding. Finally, I just went to bed. Once the lights were out, though, their pathetic mewing started up. I would shine the flashlight on them and they would stop, staring at me with their worried little eyes (Pili always looks kind of concerned). Then I would turn it off and they’d start up again. Eventually they came out and started to romp on a piece of bubble wrap (luckily without popping anything—that’s the last thing they needed) and I let them in to my mosquito net to sleep with me. They curled up their little bodies against my leg and fell asleep. They only peed on my sheets twice, but since they’re little kittens, not only was it a very small amount but it also didn’t smell too bad.

They’re getting more confident today. They sat in the armchair behind M. le Maire as we worked today, alternately napping and wrestling with one another. They’re just too adorable. As I write this, Pili is asleep on my stomach and Samba at my hip. Their soft little bodies are just what I need to give me courage.

Other than the kittens, things are going well here. I finished the rough draft of the dictionary on Friday night, and now I’m in the process of revising. I need to make sure that I have the pronunciation right for everything and that the words themselves are correct. In addition to that, I’m trying to jot down any cultural information about various words to make the dictionary more interesting. It’s slow going and I’m sure there will always be mistakes, but the progress is considerable. Two weeks and I hope to have this thing done.

Dave and Phil are coming over for dinner tonight. I think one of these days I’ll clean out the inside room of the house that has the couches and chairs in it so we can have movie nights in there. With all this work now, though, I don’t know when I’ll have time for that.

My his little soul rest in peace

2009-01-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

I wish I had nothing new to report, but unfortunately I have terrible new. Bean died. This morning, we found him dead, strangled with his own rope. I think he got tangled up with Boubou’s rope, and since it was the middle of the night, no one found him until it was too late. When I came out and Ramata told me, I turned right around and went in my room to cry for a good fifteen minutes. He was so young. The mom is devastated and keeps baaing. I’m so full of regret, since last night, I thought, “Maybe I should untie him and let him move around tonight,” but I didn’t, and now it’s too late. I am totally devastated.

Everyone else is pretty down too, though they’re used to it. Oumar says we’ll sell the mom on Sunday and use the money to buy a young sheep that’s been weaned, since now he’s grown attached to the process of coming and feeding the sheep. He moved his own young ram into the courtyard around noon, but the mom doesn’t like it very much and keeps butting it; it’s not her baby, after all.

I’m on the look-out for a kitten now to make me feel better, but I’m afraid that will just die on me too. Here I go and get a little lamb to make me happy and keep me company, and it dies a violent death. Life kind of sucks today.

Dictionary speed demon

2009-01-15T05:57:00.001-08:00

It seems that I have finally found a routine again. Yesterday morning, M. le Maire and I sat down to finish this dictionary once and for all (and by that I mean it will always be a work in progress). We worked for probably 6 hours yesterday, filling in about 400 words. Last night, I calculated that at that rate, I will have completed the first run-through of the dictionary in three days time. To celebrate that occasion, I’m going to make myself the outfit I’ve been wanting to make for the last couple of months. I haven’t had an outfit tailored since the beginning of October, so it’s high time.

It’s gotten very cold here. Yesterday morning was freezing, probably about 50. (For those of you in cold climates, I realize that this doesn’t seem bad, but the air here is dry as a bone, and when a breeze picks up, it feels quite chilly indeed.)

My battle with the mouse continues. I’ve named him Warren to make him more tolerable, but he’s destined for death anyway. I set up a mouse trap last night, but the little bugger refuses to go onto it. I’m gonna have to find something more convincing than a peanut to tempt him with. He’s taken up residence in my suitcase, which is rather inconvenient for me when I need to get things out of it. I’m also contemplating getting a kitten, a) because I like kittens and b) because of the mouse problem. We shall see.

Other than that, I have nothing new to report. The sheep and I are in good health, and having a routine makes the time pass faster.

Friends and colleagues have returned

2009-01-13T06:09:00.000-08:00

My Peace Corps friends finally got up to Douentza yesterday evening. Antony and Dave were there, plus a girl Chelsea (?) based in Sikasso and a friend of hers who is visiting for a month. Oumar and I went over to Tango Tango (now called the Mankante) to have a few beers. It was a strange mix of languages at the table, French, English, Fulfulde and Bamana. Everyone could talk to everyone in at least one of the languages. Later on, a volunteer with the French equivalent of the Peace Corps came over. His is Nicolas and he’ll be here for 2 years. He and I talked a lot, since the other don’t speak a lot of French and he doesn’t speak a lot of English. Another friend to add to my list.

Oumar went and got M. le Maire from the base of the cliff today. This evening, I think we’ll resume work on the dictionary. I have about 75% of the words, so I just need to find the other 25% and then double check everything. I hope to have both the dictionary and the fourth chapter of my grammar done by mid-February; I think it’s a very achievable goal.

Not much else to report. I heard Boubou (the big sheep) crying like a madwoman this morning around 7AM, so I went outside and found that Bean had wandered away again. He was just out in the street hanging out with some other sheep, so I hauled him back in and tethered him as punishment. Both he and Boubou are fattening up quite nicely and seem relatively pleased with their lot.

I've got plenty of time to fill

2009-01-12T06:20:00.000-08:00

I have been enjoying life back in civilization. It’s rather lonely here, but I make do. I’ve gotten a fair amount of work done in the last couple days, working on a paper Jeff sent me and making some small recordings with Ramata. Starting last night, I decided it would be a good use of my time to sit down with Ramata for an hour every evening and start editing the dictionary. I can understand her pronunciation much better than anyone else’s, so I can quickly go through and verify the words I’d found with her father or her M. Guindo. Tomorrow M. le Maire should get here, so I can simultaneously be filling in the sections of the dictionary I don’t have yet and editing those sections that I do. That way, this whole thing should be done in just two or three weeks.

Other than working, I’ve put together an entire jigsaw puzzle in under 24 hours (someone have too much alone time?), cleaned my room, had a somewhat epic battle with the mouse that used to live in Kevin’s suitcase, made some fresh-squeezed orange juice, washed some underwear in a bucket, and listened to music. Dave was going to come up to Douentza yesterday, but I guess he’s having too much fun in Sevare. Maybe he’ll come up today. It would be nice to have some company.

I got the sheep back in the courtyard again, too. I’m a little disappointed in Hamidou. I gave him 5000 francs to take care of the sheep while I was gone, but they don’t look good. According to Oumar, they weren’t getting very much to eat, even though the money I gave was more than enough for sheep food. I gave Bean a bath yesterday, but then the poor little guy spent the rest of the afternoon shivering. It is quite cold here. He’s beginning to grow some little horns. Ah, they grow up so fast.

A productive village trip? What?

2009-01-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

I’ve done my village duty and am now off the hook for the next month! As far as village trips go, this one was pretty smooth and productive. Before I get into that, check the last post, which I wasn’t able to post a few days ago because for some reason the internet wasn’t working at the radio.

Thursday morning, Oumar and I were on the road by 7:30. As usual, the motorcycle trip was half exhilarating, half terrifying. Driving in sand is such a nightmare. The motorcycle swerves left and right, trying to find traction, but Oumar is a good driver and can keep control with his feet. The worst thing you can do in sand is panic, because then you lose concentration and control and you’re bound to fall over. I kept thinking, “Il faut poser l’esprit, il faut poser l’esprit” (You have to place [calm] your mind).

We left the motorcycle at the base of the cliff, then hiked our way up. It wasn’t too hot, so the whole trip was nearly pleasant. The village felt almost deserted when we got there around 11; the kids were at school, the women were in their houses preparing lunch, and there was some meeting at the town hall that claimed all of the men. Little by little, people began trickling in, greeting me with their usual joy and exuberance. Ramata’s mother called out to me from over by her house, and when I went over to greet her, she gave me a big hug and kept holding my hand. She ushered me into her house where M. le Maire was eating a delicious lunch of millet paste with a couple other people. I sat down and joined them, scraping off handfuls of paste and dipping it into a viscous baobab leaf sauce. Really, it’s not that bad, I just don’t know how they eat it every day at every meal.

Luck was on our side this trip, because Ramata’s grandmother had brewed a huge vat of millet beer. Like good Dogons, we spent most of the day sitting in my house chatting over beer with M. le Maire and the director and Oumar and whoever else wandered in. Millet beer is great. The only ingredients are millet and water, but somehow it tastes rather sweet. It probably is only 3-5% alcohol, so you can drink a lot and feel fine. Oumar doesn’t speak any Dogon, so he and M. le Maire chatted in Fulfulde a lot while I just enjoyed the company.

Ramata’s mother prepared food for us the whole time, bringing us meals of rice or pasta at the oddest times of the day. 10:30 am? Is this lunch? Breakfast? No one, not even she, had any idea. We just ate when there was food and drank when there was beer.

It was market day, so we went at the approach of evening with Bureima and his friend. Evening is when things really pick up at the market here, unlike Douentza. It’s when all the young people come out and flirt and enjoy each other’s company. Other than company, there’s not much to find at the market of Tedie. Oumar and I left them there to their devices and went back to eat some dinner. They stumbled by later, completely drunk off of millet beer and in good spirits. Maybe they talked to pretty girls.

That evening, sitting outside under the brightest moon I’d ever seen, I had this strange sensation. It was familiar, uncomfortable, but I couldn’t place it for a second. Then I realized, “Oh yeah, this is what it feels like to be cold!” There was a breeze whipping up there that cut right through your clothes. I bundled up in my light jacket and Kevin’s turban and a long sleeve shirt, but still sat there shivering. Truth be told, it was probably only about 60, but after non-stop heat, even 70 would feel cold.

As usual, Ramata’s mother came over around 8 and wanted to chat. Sometimes our communication works great, sometimes it’s a wreck. Always it’s tiring and a little bit frustrating. So around 9, I decided I’d had enough and just went to bed, where I slept snug under my flannel sheet.

The next day was remarkably productive. While I usually go with a plan of words to find and then can find no one to work with, the people I needed (Bureima and Ramata’s mother) were quite at my disposition. I started out the morning learning gun vocabulary. I learned a lot of English words that way too. Bureima does a fair amount of hunting (though there’s not a lot of game left, just some birds), so he brought over his modern gun that takes cartridges and an old fashioned musket that takes gun powder and bullets (rocks). I got lots of pictures of rifle mechanism, learning what was the cock, the flint, the trigger, the gunpowder chamber, etc.

Then from the extreme stereotype of masculinity, I moved to the stereotype of femininity as Ramata’s mother brought over a little plastic bucket of all of her jewelry. These were probably the bulk of her wealth and her prized possessions. One by one, she showed them to me and told me their names while I took pictures. Beautiful necklaces of agate beads and some silver bracelets and earrings. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking her to show me these things before, being so precious, but now I feel she’s taken me on as a daughter and I can ask her just about anything.

All of this was achieved before noon! That was all I had planned for the village, figuring it would take me a whole day to track down, but the mission was accomplished before lunch. Thus, the afternoon passed slowly and lazily as everyone in the village went about their business. Bureima chatted for a while and M. le Maire brought more millet beer.

Looking at all the villagers, this time for some reason it really struck me how poor they are. Maybe it was Bureima that did it, dressed in completely torn and dirty clothing, but that’s just about all they own. The director’s little 3 year old, Samba, stood out from the other children in his clean blue jean overalls that actually fit, though he too has the distended Buddha-belly of malnutrition. And yet despite this poverty, people are so full of joy, and that’s why often you don’t notice it. As sad as it is, that’s how life is for them, so I guess they don’t waste any time mourning it.

I’d brought some little gifts with me from Ghana for the people I’m closest to. I gave Ramata’s mother a bead bracelet and a strip of woven cloth to the chief, who was quite pleased. He held out his wrist and proudly displayed the $10 watch I’d given him in August; I guess it was the first time he’d worn it, since he doesn’t know how to tell time, but for the duration of my stay this time, he and that watch were inseparable. To M. le Maire, I gave a carving of the Ashanti symbol for wisdom. He was really touched and taken by it, turning it in his hands, admiring it, saying, “Really, this is a great souvenir, something we can’t get here. Without wisdom, life is nothing. I should take this with me when we discuss conflicts as a reminder that wisdom is essential.” I gave another symbol to the director, one representing that we can always learn from our mistakes, and he too was pleased.

It was another cold night, another night of struggling through Tommo-So conversation with Ramata’s mother. It was a relief to both of us when Bureima came over and could translate a bit. She asked if Kevin would take another wife in the US, and I said that no, where we are, you can go to jail for having two wives. She asked, “But aren’t there a lot of women?” and I told her it was half and half, one man for one woman. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but people here claim there are a lot more women than men, so for all the women to be taken care of, men need to take multiple wives. I don’t know if all the boys die or leave the country or if it’s just an excuse or what. I think maybe the younger generations are beginning to see here, though, that multiple wives and a zillion kids just leads to a lot of problems as opposed to a lot of happiness. Maybe someday it will change.

Again, I went to bed early and slept great, except for hearing the little scrambling of a mouse somewhere in my ceiling. Ramata’s mother prepared some delicious beans for breakfast to give us strength for the walk back. I tried to give her 1000 francs ($2) for having cooked for us, but she refused, saying either that just like she prepares food for Ramata, she prepares food for me, or that because I prepare food for Ramata in Douentza, she can prepare food for me there. Either way, I told her it was very nice, and told her in Tommo-So, “Neegay, u mi naa-n.” “Now, you are my mother.”

As I was saying my goodbyes, I feel as though I sounded like Yoda, but I don’t know if that’s because my Tommo-So is bad or because direct translations of Tommo-So just sound silly in English. For instance, I wanted to tell the chief I was very happy to see him, which in Tommo-So translates to something like, “Having seen you, my heart is sweet.” They always just laugh amiably, repeat what I said, and shake my hand. We all smile and I go on my way.

Since tomorrow is Douentza’s market day, the path back was full of women carrying piles of sacks on their head. It’s 45 kilometers one way, and they do it all by foot. Oumar told me that everything they have on their heads might sell for 1000 francs (remember, $2), yet they walk 90 kilometers for it. Given, in the local currency, that might be more the equivalent of $10, but would you walk 90 kilometers for ten bucks? I sure wouldn’t.

I was grateful coming back for everything I have. I was grateful for my health, for being 22 and not having kids, for being from a wealthy country. Two days in the village feels like a month, but I can check out after 2 days and return to my electricity. The villagers are lucky if they ever get to check out.

Back to Douentza (belated)

2009-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

I have returned alone to Douentza. I think I made a good decision to travel alone in the daytime yesterday. That way, not only could I read and stare out the window for hours, but I also had some time to just think and process this change I’m going through right now. I haven’t really had alone time for two months, and while I would gladly trade it in to have Kevin back here, it’s nice to be introspective and realize that I am strong and that not only can I do this, but I will and I will enjoy it too.

The trip went smoothly, by Malian standards. It left an hour late, but I had a seat, there was only one person in the aisle, and we made good time. I think one thing that made the trip so pleasant was that their stereo system didn’t work, so they couldn’t blast terrible music the whole time. I could actually listen to my iPod at a reasonable volume, instead of having to drawn out hours of monotonous music. Don’t get me wrong, Mali has some great music. But a lot of it sounds the same, or they just play the same tape, loudly, for hours. This gets old. This makes me bitter.

It is strange being back in Douentza without Kevin. He just became such a part of my life here. Especially my room, which I had only moved into a day before I went to Bamako to get him. It feels awfully lonely now, but it will get better. Once I get into a work routine, I will have something carrying me through the days, all heading towards the goal of finishing this dictionary by the next time I go to Bamako in mid-February.

Tomorrow, Oumar and I are going to the village, just for two nights. I don’t really accomplish any work there, so I just go to greet the people and keep up relations. I’ll also try to get some vocabulary and pictures for the dictionary that I have trouble getting in Douentza. I’ve decided to go once a month from now until April and spend the rest of my time hard at work in Douentza, where I actually accomplish things. The next time I go, in February, I’ll tie up any loose ends on the dictionary, in March I want to draw a map of the village and the area, and in April I will say my goodbyes. May is just too hot and miserable to live in a mud house, and I’ll be busy with preparations to go home anyway. Also in March, I want to take a two or three day trip around the Tommo-speaking area to get some 100 word lists to compare for dialect differences. It’ll just be the tip of the iceberg of dialectology, but it’s a start.

The sheep are living with Hamidou’s family’s sheep right now. I think I’ll get them back into my courtyard, which is sort of selfish of me, because they probably like being with other sheep, but they bring a small amount of joy into my life, so I want them here. Apparently the mother got diarrhea, but hopefully she’ll be okay. Oumar says they’re doing well otherwise. Ah, the joys of owning livestock.

Back to brousse tomorrow

2009-01-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

This stay in Bamako is almost over. Tomorrow morning, I will head out to Douentza on the morning bus. All of these options I had for traveling with people (Jeremy yesterday evening, Dave and Braxton tomorrow evening), and here I am deciding to go alone. See, here is my thought process. I don't have anything to do here tomorrow, and if I take the morning bus, not only will I not have to try to sleep when I obviously can't (then sleep in my own bed!), but also I will be able to read and write with the daylight. I've perfected the art of sitting and staring at nothing for hours (the village is great for honing this skill), so I might as well have some light to do it in.

Yesterday, I went over to Niarela and met up with Dave and his family for lunch. Jeremy, my Fulbright friend, was also randomly hanging out at the same hotel/restaurant Le Campagnard, so we could touch base about our travel plans. Dave's parents and sister were really nice and paid for everyone's lunch at a patisserie. I also met another Peace Corps person, a young woman named Jenny who's been here for 2 and a half years based around Bamako.

After lunch, Dave's family wanted to do some souvenir shopping, so I went back to Rosemary's house. She has a beautiful Skype with webcam set up. For the first time in 3 months, I saw my parents. While not in person, it was still quite nice.

I made a big salad for dinner, then went out and got a beer with a lot of PC kids. I didn't want to keep Rosemary and her family up, so I came back before they went to bed. I certainly don't want to be an imposing house guest in any way, since they're already kind enough to be putting me up.

This morning, Rosemary and I set off to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST -- the Malians inherited the love of abbreviations from the French) to renew our research authorizations. Well, I actually never had one of my own, but rather am on Jeff's, but I went to see if I could renew it somehow. I apparently needed three passport photos, which I didn't have, so they told me it would just be easier to get some pictures of Jeff and to come renew his in February. Shows how important the piece of paper is in the meantime. Rosemary got hers no problem, though. The woman working there was Bambara and insulted me (jokingly?) a lot about being Dogon, so much that I thought she should be Songhay! The ethnic cousinhood is always interesting here.

Afterwards, we went back to the same patisserie and had breakfast with Jeremy, who was also trying to get his authorization, then back to Rosemary's for lunch.

I decided I should go to the bank so long as I was in Bamako, so I grabbed a taxi and headed across town to the BNDA after lunch. My plan was to meet up with Dave afterwards and have him take me to this infamous "spice lady" in Niarela, but when I walked into the bank, my hopes were dashed. I took a number, only to find it was over 100 people away from the number they were currently calling. Some people got fed up and I moved up about 40 people, but it still took 2 hours to get my money. Everyone was getting fed up. We were all comrades in Operation Bank Misery. To make matters worse, I'd told the taxi driver to wait and then take me to Niarela afterwards, and I couldn't leave the bank to tell him either to wait or go since they'd closed the door to the outside (the bank would be closing after we got through). So finally after 2 hours, I went back outside, and the driver was there but fed up, and I was fed up, so I just paid him a bunch and went back to Rosemary's house.

That's when I decided to leave tomorrow morning, so I got my bus tickets, and I've been hanging out ever since. I'm enjoying the last bit of CNN and decent internet I'll be getting in a while.

And for those of you who are wondering, Kevin got home just fine, so that's a relief for me.

Next post from Douentza!

PS Those of you who want snail mail from me (postcards, letters, doodles) should send me your addresses. I will have plenty of time to write.

Alone again

2009-01-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Middle of the night last night, I dropped Kevin off at the airport, and I now I carry on on my own. It feels rather empty, but I'll get through. I've set up a very rigorous work regime for myself for the last few months. I figure if I stay busy, it'll hurt less.

This morning, after a lonely breakfast, I moved into Rosemary's house for the next three nights. It'll be nice to have some company for moral support during these few hard days. We walked from her house to Azar Libre Service grocery store with her 9-year-old son Hamed in the late afternoon. His youthful energy also is a nice distraction from my sadness. I made mac n' cheese for him and me for dinner. It felt good to cook, especially some comfort food like mac n' cheese.

One day at a time. It'll get better.

Cutest picture of Bean

2009-01-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

This deserves a post all of its own.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-01T07:03:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the 2009 version of Pangolin Watch! It’s not actually a different version. Just now the date reads 2009. But no matter.

We’ve just been hanging out in Bamako, enjoying the fast wireless internet and decent food. Tuesday night, we went to check out a restaurant/bar called the Crazy Horse, a strangely red- and white-themed place with plastic tables and chairs with a hidden Indian menu. The Indian food didn’t taste very Indian, despite the restaurant being owned by Indians, but we had a margarita and some stir fry-esque food.

The next day for lunch, we went to the Broadway Café and melted in ecstasy at the taste of their cheeseburgers. To boot, I had a delicious mint chocolate milk shake and Kevin had a Coke float. They were playing some great new top 40 hits on their slightly ambient speakers, setting the mood just right.

In the late afternoon, we went up to a local market not far from the hotel so I could try to find some fun clothes for New Year’s partying. We took a taxi up the hill and he dropped us off, instructing us to penetrate the market via a dimly lit alleyway. The market was a maze of little stalls selling all sorts of clothing and shoes, light filtering in through the tarp and tin roof covering the whole place. It was like an oversized child’s fort, only full of second hand clothes. Despite all that, it was remarkably not overwhelming. We weren’t swarmed by hawkers, just a few people calling out to have us look at their stuff. I was in the mood to bargain, so I got myself a little dress for 15 bucks and some funky pointy shoes, silver with some multi-colored straps across the toe.

After successfully completing the market mission, we went back to the hotel to hang out until festivities time. We had agreed to meet the other Fulbrighters at a place called the Harlem City Bar, run by Brandon (whom I had never met)’s landlord. It was nice to see Jeremy and Paul and Marie again, and I got to meet Brandon, but the vibe was kind of off. Everyone was speaking in French, even though Marie and Kevin don’t really speak any French, and it was lots of talk of Senegalese politics. I’m okay with going local, but when I get together with my American friends here, I just want to be American. Marie didn’t seem to be feeling it either.

We got some beer, but once that began wearing off, I suggested we move the party to a club called No Stress, where Dave had told me the Bamako Peace Corps kids were going. We couldn't really rile the troops, so Kevin and I headed off solo to start the party alone. After all, midnight was fast approaching.

No Stress is the club above Amandine, the restaurant I always used to hang out at when I stayed at SIL. Amandine was crawling with people. There wasn’t a table to be found. We finally busted inside and ordered a couple drinks directly from their bar and just stood outside drinking them. The club itself apparently wouldn’t open until midnight, which seemed kind of like the climax of the night to me. But what do I know?

After paying a hefty $50 to get Kevin and me in, we found ourselves upstairs in a club as swanky as an LA one. Couches, full bar, strobe-lit dance floor… midnight passed uneventfully. Kevin was in the bathroom, I think. But then the music started up, playing all of the best hip hop you could expect in the States, and we danced the night away. At one point, they played this thumping song about Obama, accompanied by a video with pictures of him (“Obama obama obama obama obama”). A non-ironic song about the American president in a hip hop club in Mali on New Year’s. Rather surreal.

The others never did come to join us. They showed up while we were waiting in line, but then they never came up. No matter, we had a great time. It was a fun way to ring in the new year.

Kevin leaves late tomorrow night. I’m dreading it, but now I’m in the home stretch. 2009 is the year I come home. Thanks to everyone who made 2008 such a good year for me.

Another album of pictures

2008-12-31T02:52:00.001-08:00

Click here to find pictures of the Bean and of Timbuktu!

Timbuktu and some sheep? Yes please.

A wacky trip to Bamako

2008-12-30T08:58:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that I continue to feel fine and that I am now in Bamako with Kevin. Let me retrace our steps for you.

Things are getting wackier and wackier in Mali to give Kevin a last huzzah, it seems. First, there had been a mouse in the clutter of our room in Douentza for a few days, and in the process of packing, we discovered it had made a little home in Kevin’s suitcase, where it enjoyed regular peanut feasts. Then, I dumped a few bags of random garbage in the courtyard, a lot of which was Christmas wrapping paper, and sure enough, maybe an hour later, there are four or five kids rummaging through, playing with their new-found toys. And then as if the bathroom in Douentza couldn’t get any worse, there was a pile of poop on the floor in front of the door. Great.

On a happier note, I finally got my Nova Cuttlefish special I had ordered from Amazon about a month ago, which we enjoyed. If you don’t know cuttlefish, read up on Wikipedia, or just hang on until Kevin and I co-author an informative and entertaining book about the world’s coolest creature (move over, pangolin).

Before we left Douentza, I went back over to our Bella neighbors’ house to get Kevin a new ring made, since the Atlantic Ocean of Ghana ate his last one. The woman there is friendly. When she saw me, she jumped up and gave me a hug as if we were long lost friends. The Bella were traditionally the slave cast (more like indentured servants) of the Touaregs, so they speak Tamashek and share a lot of the same culture, but they are black Africans as opposed to Berber people. This is the family that Jeff always goes to when he needs any sort of leatherwork goods, such as the camel saddle I gifted to my brother and sister-in-law for their wedding.

Anyhow, while we were sitting there talking about it (rather Hamidou acted as translator and I just sat there), I could watch the men working the silver. Their techniques probably haven’t changed much in the last few hundred years. They start with a chunk of raw metal, which they nestle into some hot coals in the ground, and someone heats it with a simple bellows. Then they remove it with tongs and pounds it with a hammer on what looks like a railroad spike stuck in the ground. This process continues of heat and pound, heat and pound, presumably until (in the case of a ring) it becomes the ideal length and width. At this point, they take a chisel and pound a groove along the entire length, into which they will insert a strip of copper for ornamentation. I didn’t see how they join they ends of the ring or file it down smooth, but it was interesting to watch some as seemingly solid as metal bend to the desire of the smith. After the first ring they made was much too thin, they came around with a second one later that night which will serve as a better memento for Kevin when he leaves here all too soon.

On Sunday, the fabled Amelia and Abdoul Salaam came through Douentza. Abdoul Salaam had worked with Jeff for many years, for his language, Hombori Songhay, and more generally on the project. Then he met Amelia, who was in the Peace Corps in Petaga. They fell in love, got married, and are now in North Carolina. I’ve heard stories about them from Jeff and all of his assistants here, so it was nice to actually meet them. They were both charming people. We chatted for much of the afternoon before they headed out to Hombori in the evening.

They had recommended Sonef buses to us for our trip to Bamako, so on Monday afternoon, we went to the freeway to wait for the bus. We got there a little after 3, and of course the bus didn’t show up until 5. Amelia had said that Sonef runs a tight ship: insists on timeliness, doesn’t let people sit in the aisles, decent buses… Well, this is Mali, they got there late, the aisle was full of people without seats going to Sevare (then again between San and Bamako).

The bus was a death trap. It started with a burning smell before we got to Sevare. It was evening by this point, so when I looked out the back door when we stopped, I saw the light of the blinker on the trees and thought it was a fire. Adrenaline coursed through my body and I was about ready to vault the back of my chair and sprint off into the night when I realized that there was no fire. That would’ve been embarrassing. Later, it became clear that the burning rubber smell came from braking. Next, the driver drove way too fast. He would take the turns without slowing down, leaving Kevin and I clutching white-knuckled the backs of the seats in front of us. Not to mention that there was some army guy on the bus in full fatigues carrying a machine gun that would be pointed directly at my head whenever he got on and off the bus.

It was a long, bumpy, sleepless ride, but we finally got to Bamako a little after 6AM and made it back to Hotel Djenne, where Kevin’s adventure began. The only room they had ready was a small suite for $10 more a night, so now we’ve got two rooms and a couch, and of course, fast wireless internet again.

We took a nap in the morning then went out to L’Express for lunch, where we both got incredibly rich pizzas—him a 4 cheese pizza with Roquefort, and me a calzone with egg, ham, pepperoni and cheese stuffed in it. Mmmm.

I’m not sure what our New Year’s plans are yet. Jeremy should be in town, and he seems better at snooping out parties than we are, so I’ll just kick back and wait for that information to come to me. In the meantime, we’ll just be enjoying the Bamakois highlife.

Merry Christmas -- You got malaria!

2008-12-27T02:57:00.001-08:00

This post is bound to be long, so for those of you who want the three word summary: sheep, Timbuktu, malaria.

Last Sunday, we sent Oumar on a sheep mission in the market. Our only criteria: small and cute. That morning, the landlord and his family had shown up and taken over much of the courtyard. Remembering how bossy his wife and daughter had been when they had come at the end of the summer, I was not too pleased to see him there, but it turns out that he is really nice. He gave Oumar some more work to do on the house like painting the bathroom and trimming the trees. More on that later.

Just before lunch, I heard baaing in the courtyard. I peaked my head out the door, and there was Oumar leading a mama sheep with a tiny lamb in Hamidou’s arms. Apparently after scouring the whole market, this was the only ewe and lamb combination they could find. In fact, even these two had already been sold to someone planning to take them to Bamako, but we bought them out.

Kevin and I have had fun giving them many names, but the ones that have stuck are Boubou for the mother and either Petite or Professor Bean Pumpkinweather for the little guy. Boubou is quite robust with a dark brown front half (save for her little white shoes) and white on the back. Bean is mostly white, but with some of his mother’s dark brown splotches around his face. He’s probably about three weeks old now, and growing fast. Boubou is tied up by the garden, but Bean can prance around as he likes, much to the chagrin of his mother who grumbles whenever he gets out of reach.

While I thought the landlord or the neighbors would kind of begrudge us putting sheep in the courtyard, everybody would tell us how fine looking our sheep were and congratulate us on them. I guess now we’re truly Malian.

With sheep purchased, we were free to go to Timbuktu. Oumar and I went down to the freeway to get transport information. We found a 4x4 going up the next morning whenever it filled up—could be 4AM, could be 9AM. The guy took Oumar’s phone number and said he would call when the car was going to leave.

Sure enough, at around 6 the next morning, I awoke to Oumar knocking on our door, saying he had gotten the call. We threw on some clothes and trudged like zombies to the roadside. Of course I should have known there was no rush. Why would anything leave on time in Mali? We sat there waiting for the car to leave until probably 8 or 9. I’d reserved the two seats up front next to the driver, figuring it would be slightly more comfortable than the middle seat with four people or the trunk with six.

The road to Timbuktu is awful. It’s a sandy dirt track engraved with mysterious ridges that bother the driver so much that he chooses to drive off-road in sandy ruts that make the vehicle fishtail. Not to mention that our driver looked to be about 16. Every now and again, we would stop and pick up some hitchhikers who rode on the roof on top of the baggage.

As you get further north out of Douentza, the landscape gets sparser and sparser. More sand, less trees, no cliffs. There were also an inexplicably large amount of donkeys in places with no villages in sight. After a grueling five or six hours, we drove into water world, where the Niger river sprawls over the dusty earth. We drove out onto this little dirt causeway and parked to wait for the barge to carry us across.

It took at least three hours for the boat to come. I was not feeling great at this point, sitting on a wooden bench, exhausted and slightly nauseous. Even when the barge got there, at the cusp of evening, I wasn’t sure we would get our vehicle on, such was the queue of cars and trucks waiting. They crammed an incredible number of vehicles on, though. Four SUVs like ours and two trucks, plus a small herd of cattle who would occasionally slip and fall in their own shit. Nevertheless, it was certainly pretty watching the sun go down over this wide expanse of water, with villages on little islands, their mud houses built right up to the edge of the water.

It was nearly dark when we drove off on the other side at the port city of Koroume. The drive from there to Timbuktu proper probably took no more than twenty minutes, since the road was actually paved. Driving in, we could already sense that we had crossed some cultural divide: the cobbled streets with adjoined buildings felt like some medieval European town and almost everyone was wearing turbans.

We were dropped off in the center of town, where we picked up our guide, since we had read you would be hounded constantly if you didn’t. His name was Ali and he showed us to our hotel, the Hotel Bouctou, and gave us a rendezvous for the next day at the hotel.

The hotel was simple, but it did the trick. There was a strange assortment of furniture in the room, as if someone knew that putting furniture in was a good idea but didn’t know how to properly carry it out. For instance, there was an armoire, but it had a chair right in front of it, rendering it totally useless.

We ordered some food at the hotel’s restaurant, the first thing we ate basically all day. I got through a bowl of vegetable soup when I started to feel cold and unwell. When my couscous came out, I had absolutely no appetite and only ate a couple of bites. After dinner, we retreated to the room, where I lay shivering uncontrollably fully clothed under a heavy blanket. I fell asleep that way, but the sleep was choppy and troubled.

The next morning, I was feeling okay enough to go out on our tour of the town. We started out looking at a couple of the old mosques, built in the 15th and 16th centuries, but redone every year, since they’re made of mud brick. Timbuktu is also full of beautiful carved wooden doors and windows, which our guide pointed out to us. Apparently they are all made by one family, and have been for centuries. We went into a little Podunk museum that showed a traditional Timbuktu house with artifacts and all. It was sort of interesting, but basically just overpriced. From there, we saw some of the old European explorers’ houses, Barth, Caille, etc., who braved desert raids and malaria to reach the fabled city. Those were only the ones who made it. The guide also showed us the Flamme de la Paix peace monument that was built after the large Touareg rebellion of 1996. They melted down some three thousands weapons after the cease fire, which gives you some idea of the scale of the conflict.

From there, we got sucked into a Touareg tent “for tea”, which was really an excuse for the Touaregs to sell us their goods. It was interesting being in the tent, a low building made of wooden poles covered in woven mats, but man, those guys were ruthless hawkers. And all of them will tell you the same thing: “You won’t find one like this anywhere else. Each piece has a story. For you I’ll give you a good price.” We basically got pressured into buying more stuff than we needed or wanted, but that’s okay.

After finally escaping from their clutches, we took a quick swing through Timbuktu’s market, which is basically like Douentza’s, then went back to the hotel. I rested up for a few minutes, then Kevin and I went out to find lunch. We ate at this little restaurant called the Poulet d’Or (golden chicken), even though when we ordered their chicken, it turned out they didn’t have any.

We were supposed to go camel riding at 4 o’ clock. However, after lunch, I started to not feel real great again. I felt sort of feverish and chilled. Kevin convinced me that it would be a good idea to go to the doctor just to make sure I was okay, since I hadn’t brought my thermometer or anything with me. Around 3:30, we asked the man at the reception about clinics, and he sent us on motorcycles with our guide and another guide to go see a good doctor, Dr. Toure.

He saw me right away. It turned out I had a pretty high temperature, at least 100 degrees, though I’m not entirely certain on my Celsius conversion. He sent me to the lab, where the technician took a quick blood test and confirmed that I had early stages of malaria. The doctor prescribed some malaria medication and aspirin to me, then told us to wait while he removed some cyst or something. We had to wait nearly an hour for him to finish doing that, just so he could write us a receipt. I guess I shouldn’t have expected a Malian clinic to actually go fast, even when it had started out that way.

The problem with the medication was that it needed to be taken with food, but I had no appetite. I picked up some bananas and oranges and bread at the market before going to the hotel. After taking the medication, I slept fairly well and woke up feeling okay. We spent the morning resting up, then headed out for lunch. We ate at this strangely American-themed restaurant and bar, which offered basically no American food, but it had a cow skull and some American license plates. Unlike the Poulet d’Or, they had chicken, and it was great.

Before our rescheduled camel riding, we thought we might go see some other sites our guidebook had talked about. We wanted to see the institute that archives all of the manuscripts, I think that must be where Jeremy works, but it was closed because they built a new building that wasn’t open yet. The guidebook also mentioned a water tower you could climb and get a good view of the city, but the guide seemed to think that you couldn’t go up that. We asked if we could go in the mosque, but it was closed for renovations. Finally, we settled on a library that archived some of the manuscripts, but it was also closed for the time being. The guide told us to just go have a drink at the hotel and we could stop back at the library before the camels.

In the end, the library didn’t open early, so we decided to ride camels and then hit up the manuscripts in the evening. We tromped over some sand dunes out the back of our hotel to where some Touaregs were waiting with camels. The style of riding is completely different than it was in India. Whereas there, you road the camel basically like a horse, with stirrups and all, here you sat in this big wooden chair-like saddle with a plank both at your back and up between your legs, and you crossed your feet on the camel’s neck. It was actually a much easier way of riding. But I suppose these guys are desert nomads, it goes without saying that they would have figured out the easiest way of riding.

We were led out into the desert by the group of Touaregs. Two men to lead the camels, one man to act as the main guide, another guy to speak to Kevin in English a bit, and the last one whose only purpose seemed to be to ask us “Ca va?” every three minutes. We reached the “door of the desert”, the place where the real dunes of the Sahara began. There, we got off the camels and scrambled up a dune to sit and observe the desert in all of its splendor. Here, the sand was still dotted with scrubby bushes, but apparently three days out, it becomes only sand as far as the eye can see. These guys do salt caravans: fifteen days out by camel to pick up the salt and fifteen days back. They taught us a couple words of Touareg, which I have completely forgotten, but it was interesting at the time. And of course, obligatorily, they hawked some goods with all of the same catch phrases.

After a while of resting on the dunes, watching little scarabs leave bird-like tracks in the sand, we got back on our camels and headed for home. At this point, I began to feel sort of nauseous. Maybe it was the rocking of my desert ship that was doing it, I don’t know. When we got off where we started, I just wanted to power back to the hotel. We rested a few minutes, then I pulled together some energy to go see the manuscripts, all the while feeling rather queasy.

The library was a beautiful building, if nothing else, with lovely doors and windows and a nice stone courtyard. They had a small room devoted to manuscripts, with some of the more interesting pieces displayed in glass cases. They had what seems to be the Gutenberg Bible of Korans, illuminated with real gold, as well as texts on Islamic law and grammar and science. It was a quick tour, but interesting.

It was dinner time, but I certainly didn’t feel like eating. I choked down a banana and a couple of oranges to take my medicine, but that was all I could handle. Kevin ventured out on his own for dinner, thankfully unhassled in the dark. He went back to the same American restaurant, where apparently the power went out for about twenty minutes, leaving him to drink beer and ponder in the pitch blackness of Timbuktu. Meanwhile, I just lay uncomfortably in bed, wanting to throw up but not being able to.

That all changed in the middle of the night, when my stomach decided it had had enough with the banana and oranges. Unfortunately, it didn’t make me feel completely better. When we got up at 4:30 the next morning to wait for the 4x4 to take us back, I was still feeling exhausted and nauseous. Luckily, the trip back went much more quickly than the trip there. We got all the way from Timbuktu to Douentza in about 6 hours, as opposed to the 10 for going there, but it was still a painful trip, bumpy and stifling since the driver had the windows up and no fan on.

Christmas day, and we were back in Douentza. We trudged back home, only to find with horror that Oumar had hacked all of the branches off of our two trees. Just splintered trunks standing like corpses beside our garden. No more shade. No more little chirping red birds. I was so depressed I could cry just looking at that. To escape it, I collapsed in bed. In the afternoon, we walked up to the post office to see if any of the mail I was waiting for had arrived. It hadn’t, but on the way back, as usual, a herd up sheep ran by us, and Kevin says, “Isn’t that Bean?” Sure enough, the little brat had gotten caught up in the herd and was crying incessantly, examining each ewe to see if it was his mother. Kevin ran to check if Bean was indeed gone, while I chased the little lamb back towards the house. Eventually, he ran into somebody’s courtyard, where I followed him and scooped him up in my arms. Kevin found me en route as I carried him back, confirming that indeed this was the Professor. The reunion of mother and child was ever so cute. When we got in the door, both Boubou and Bean starting crying and running towards each other. Bean proceeded to suckle, his little tail wagging. He is quite a naughty boy.

For Christmas festivities, we opened some presents my parents had sent to us, which made it feel like we weren’t quite so far away. I just wish I had been in better health. The whole time, my head was still throbbing and I had no energy.

Yesterday was no better. I spent the whole day lying around like a lump. In fact, I probably gave myself a headache just because I was sleeping so much. We tried to watch Wall-E last night, which my parents gave me for Christmas, but I just feel asleep. At 2 in the morning, I woke up, unable to sleep anymore, so I paced around the courtyard for a while in the cold night air until I went back to bed and drowsed until 6:30, when I needed to put my foot down and stop sleeping. Today, I’m finally feeling better. I thought it would never happen, but I have an appetite and my headache is gone.

All in all, not the most pleasant last few days, but still exciting and novel. I mean, where else can I get malaria in Timbuktu on Christmas?

Reflections on marriages and money

2008-12-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today, we got sucked into a marriage party. We were heading out the door to go buy water at the market when Hamidou came and told us to come over to his house. We were ushered into a dim room with various weavings hung on the walls, where he offered us soft drinks and bags of frozen native ginger ale (very spicy). We were not entirely sure what was going on, but it gave us a chance to admire a couple of Hamidou’s aunts in their finery: fancy boubous, gold rings in the braids framing their faces, eye make-up. Hamidou showed us his wife-to-be, a baby girl about 10 months old.

They had a nice TV set with cable in there, surprisingly enough, which we watched a bit while waiting for the newlyweds to arrive. Eventually we went back across the street to our house to eat lunch, but then the procession came down the street, with cheering and shouting. Oumar rushed us out and we saw the couple, the groom in a suit and the bride in a white wedding dress, flanked by family and friends.

We still had little to no idea of what was happening, but just allowed ourselves to be led around, back into the room, now packed with well-wishers, where Oumar took a bunch of photos and some griots asked us for money. Traditionally, a caste of people known as griots show up at weddings and other celebrations and start singing the history of you and your family and you have to give them money to go away. Even the people here complain about it being rather annoying.

Finally, the party moved on and we were free to return home and finish our rice.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my financial image here lately. I never quite know how to act, when to give, how much to give, etc. It is clear that I (and basically anyone else coming from the US) have more financial means than most people here. At the same time, those means are not as great as the people here think, seeing my white skin. They seem to think that white people have an endless stream of wealth, an idea which I suppose colonialism and recent tourism would support. However, I am here on research money, and what I don’t spend on expenses I try to save for expenses when I get home, where sandwiches cost $5.

When strangers ask me for money, I have a pretty much no-go policy. I figure that I have enough friends here who are in need of things that they should be where I concentrate my efforts. Even with my friends, I can’t get them everything there heart desires, a) because I don’t have that kind of money and b) because it sets up a weird power relationship that I don’t like. I’m not here to be a sugar mama. And even the kids in the street who scream, “Toobob, give me a present!”, it makes me feel uncomfortable how they just assume that racially they are poorer and I must be Santa Claus because of the color of my skin.

The past few days, though, people have asked me for things that I have granted. Maybe it’s the holiday spirit. Hamidou and Ramata I consider to be my children, and I take care of them however I can. Hamidou’s shoes are falling apart—I told him I’d buy him new ones. I let Oumar use the motorcycle a lot (I would like to cut back on that with the new one) and buy the gas for it. The neighbor boys asked me for money to buy a soccer ball last night, and even though I don’t usually interact with them, I gave it to them, and they’ve been playing with it ever since. But it’s not an uneven exchange. People around here do so much for me, from looking over the house while I’m gone, to taking care of our garden, to running errands. It’s just so hard to know when you’re giving too much or when you’re not giving enough.

Enough of that. Oumar and the boys planted some lettuce in our garden yesterday. We’ll see if it grows. The only thing flourishing is a papaya tree that still isn’t giving any fruit (so much for flourishing). Tomorrow, Kevin and I are going to buy a sheep with a newborn lamb. When else will I get the opportunity to raise sheep? And here I can do it in the comfort of my own courtyard. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll just resell it. But the lambs are just so cute. We stopped by M. Guindo’s house a couple of days ago. He raises a lot of animals, and now one of his ewes gave birth to three lambs that were only a couple of weeks old. Their ears are so soft. Seeing them really sealed the deal.

Then it’s off to Timbuktu for a couple of nights, and we’ll be back here on Christmas Eve to celebrate at home base. Unfortunately, Oumar, my only somewhat Christian friend, is going to his family’s village near Sevare to celebrate, but I’m sure Ramata (who is only questionably Muslim anyway) and the others will take any excuse for a small feast.

Back from our many travels

2008-12-18T03:04:00.000-08:00

We are back in Douentza! Bright and early Monday morning, our taxi came and picked us up at our hotel and we hit the road. This time, the taxi was luxury—it had AC, so then we didn’t have to have the windows down and get coated in dust the entire trip. We got through the border without any problems and were to Bandiagara by a bit after noon.

Since we had rented the car for the day, I decided to make the most of it and get some errands done on our way back to Douentza. Kirill’s village, Songho, is just beyond Bandiagara, so we dropped by to say hello. As we were on our way down the dirt road leading to the village, Kirill comes up on his motorcycle, apparently on his way to Bandiagara to get to the bank before it closed. So we got to say a brief hello, but continued on to the village ourselves to have a soda and a look around.

After that, we stopped in Sevare to go to the bank and post office and have lunch. We were back on the road by 4 o’ clock and made it into Douentza just after sundown.

We put up the taxi driver that night so he could leave early the next morning and get back to Ouagadougou. Here, when you rent a taxi like that, you have to pay for both the trip over and for the driver to get back. I guess it makes sense, you can’t strand them in a foreign country, but it’s too bad you have to pay for time you don’t use.

It was very nice to be home and see my friends again. I gave people the little souvenirs I brought from Ghana. It’s really hard to judge how people will respond to gifts. For example, I got Hamidou, Mr. 13 going on 30, a little black and silver necklace with Ghana’s (and also incidentally Mali’s) colors in it, and I was afraid that maybe it wasn’t appropriate or he wouldn’t like it, but he was thrilled, telling me, “I’m going to keep this until the day I die.” Figures. Then the next day, Oumar came up and me and said, “I saw that great necklace you got for Hamidou, do you have any more like that?” I’d gotten him a bottle opener carved like a crocodile, which he liked, but I guess the necklace was really the hit.

On Tuesday, I bought a new motorcycle. The old Star was just costing more money to repair it every three days than it was worth, and it practically wouldn’t start anymore, so it was time. Hamidou’s uncle works at a mechanic shop associated with a guy who sells motorcycles, and they’d gotten some new Stars in, so Oumar and I went and bought one. It’s more or less the same as my old motorcycle, just a little smaller and it actually works. I’m in that overprotective-of-new-expensive-thing mode, but I’m sure I will be able to drive it without worrying about dust eventually.

Yesterday, however, was a bad day. Kevin and I tried to come to the internet on the new motorcycle, but it just turned into a disaster. I took it out in the street to start it, but it wasn’t starting up very easily. Whenever this happens, a huge crowd of mostly boys and young men forms, staring at you, saying variably “Why don’t you give it to Monsieur [Kevin]?” or “Laura, it’s hard.” Yeah, shut up. Me being a woman has nothing to do with me not being able to start the motorcycle. Oumar eventually came up and got it started, but I was already feeling humiliated by that time.

Now on a roll, we wound our way through Douentza until we got in a deadlock with another motorcycle and had to stop. This in turn made the engine stop. I was already angry that my new motorcycle was stalling and then even more angry with all of the young men being like, “Laura, it’s hard, huh?”, so fuming, I let a man take my motorcycle to his shop to look at it. Oumar eventually rolled up, having heard that I’d had a problem, and asked me why I hadn’t called him, or what I was doing taking it the shop. I was too mad and upset to even speak. After replacing some part on the engine, I drove the old Star home and Oumar took Kevin back on the new one.

Oumar proceeded to tell me how it just needed to be broken in or something like that, so I let him take it out and I went in my room to cry out my frustration. I just get so sick of men’s vanity here, either patronizing me about the motorcycle or trying to marry me off as if I’m just some cow or object to be tossed around. Certainly, it’s much easier on a day-to-day basis to be a woman here than it was in India, but it’s still an incredibly sexist culture, undertones of which pervade everything.

No matter, yesterday afternoon, we went over to Dave’s place and played some “ladder ball” and tossed around a Frisbee. Then before bed, Kevin read through some of the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit with me and we watched a David Attenborough documentary on Easter Island. Today, the motorcycle took us here no problem. Perhaps Oumar was right. Perhaps it did need to be broken in.

Imagine the least efficient system ever--then make it two degrees worse.

2008-12-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

Today, I passed my threshold of tolerance for transportation inefficiency. Kevin can attest to my rage. All that about Ghana’s bus system being so much better than Mali’s? Forget it.

So we went to the STC station in Kumasi at 3, when we were told to report for our 4 o’ clock bus to Ouagadougou. The bus didn’t even show up until 4, much less actually depart. The luggage holds were full to the brim, and I was afraid we wouldn’t get our suitcases on, but they found a way. And that way was filling every extra nook and cranny inside the bus with luggage. Goodbye safety codes. The stairwell to the back door of the bus was entirely blocked by a luggage heap that spilled down the whole aisle as well.

We had seats 46 and 47, the very last row of the bus, where we had a fun fivesome of people crushed in with us in the back corner. The AC was on, but you could only feel it if you put your palm right up against the vent.

The bus finally left closer to 5. As usual, we got our born-again Christian movies, these being particularly blatant with a real-life devil being defeated by a Bible-wielding, Jesus-praying wholesome priest. No subtlety, but kind of comical.

A couple of hours into the journey, we came to a halt next to a cyanide truck (it warned of cyanide, I don’t really know what it contained) and stayed there for at least an hour. Usually if the bus stops, it’s at a station, and you can get off and pee, but no one was moving. I think what happened was that it had rained and some vehicle ahead of us (truck, perhaps?) had gotten stuck in a mud trap and couldn’t move. In any case, we got moving again eventually.

Now, there are a lot of things about the bus process that just make no sense, as if someone in charge were trying to be the most inefficient as humanly possible. In this case, the bus left Kumasi at 4PM, which meant that we arrived at the border with Burkina after the border crossing closed. First of all, why would you close a border? It’s the border. People move across it. Do people just pack up and go home at night? That would seem to invite illegal crossing. If they’re there, though, why not just let people through? Second, why not have the bus either leave earlier so that we get to the border crossing before it closes or later so that we arrive in the morning when it opens? No, we have to leave at 4, which should have gotten us there maybe around 10PM, but it was actually closer to 3AM or 4AM after all of the delay.

So we pull into the STC station at Bolgatanga (I believe) and they turn the bus off so people could sleep. Except you can’t sleep because it’s a stuffy, overflowing bus where you have no room to sit. Kevin and I just got out and sat around until the sun came up, and I used the rest of my Ghanaian phone credit to call my parents. At least it was a morning menagerie at the bus station: pigs snuffling around in piles of trash, a serious pigeon party complete with throat-feather puffing above us, and a small flock of guinea fowl whose disproportionately small heads would poke up over the tin roof of the bus station every now and again accompanied by a chorus of clucking and the scrambling of avian feet on metal. We pulled out of the station again at around 7 or 8, probably at least an hour after the border re-opened.

You have already read about the inexplicably inefficient border crossings. This experience took the cake, though. We get out at the border leaving Ghana (which you would think would be the same as the one entering Burkina Faso, but of course not), where we have to fill out the same forms we filled in entering just to leave. Then a couple of guys in front of us (American and Canadian, I think) got sucked into a Ghanaian visa trap, whereby it seems that you purchase a one-year visa, but when you enter the country you’re only granted 60 days, after which you have to either leave and come back for another 60 days or apply for an extension. Both of their 60 days had expired (I think they had been studying at a university), so they presumably had to pay to get their visas extended.

After that, we piled back onto the bus, though those two got left behind and had to walk to the next checkpoint, just a kilometer up the road, probably. There we again got out and gave our passports to the Burkinabe authorities. There were several foreigners on the bus who hadn’t bothered to get their visas until they got to the border, and for future reference for those considering doing that, just don’t. Just go to the embassy before you leave, otherwise you hold everybody up and fill people like me with rage. So those people get their visas and head back to the bus, but then the rest of us have to wait even more for the border agents to actually get around to looking at our passports. When we finally got them, we found that the bus had pulled rather far away and out of sight into a sea of semi-trucks.

Upon actually locating the bus, we noticed that they were taking all of the carefully Tetris-ed luggage out of the luggage holds. I guess the border patrol needed to check luggage now. So here’s the whole bus population standing around with their suitcases while the border patrol agents presumably do nothing, wander around the bus, people get on and off, no one is looking at anything. Maybe a half an hour later, they look at some boxes in the luggage hold, waste time for another 15 minutes, then come and “look at” our luggage, which consisted of us unzipping it and showing them the top layer. So secure. After all of this, the luggage had to be forced back into the bus, which again took an infuriatingly long time. By the time we got through the myriad borders, it was past 11 o’ clock.

My blood pressure was steadily mounting the whole time, since I was hoping to get into Ouaga in the morning and get a taxi back to Mali on the same day, but these dreams were being ripped to pieces. And it was hot. And it was crowded. And none of it made any sense.

There really should be an easier way of traveling. I could think of at least a dozen no-brainers to make the whole experience that much less unpleasant. In the end, it took over 20 hours to go the distance from LA to San Francisco. Given, there was a border crossing involved, but as Kevin put it, "That shouldn't add 16 hours."

Anyway, we’re here in Ouagadougou now, back at the Hotel Yibi, and we have a taxi out to Douentza tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to getting home, as much as Douentza is home. Home for the holidays, right? I wish.

How can it be this hard?

2008-12-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

We are still in Kumasi, Ghana. We explored every conceivable option on how to get back to Mali in the cheapest and most efficient way, and after weighing our options, it still made sense to wait for the STC bus that leaves tomorrow to get to Ouagadougou and maybe rent a taxi to take us straight back to Douentza from there. It is just mind-bogglingly difficult to get distances that are not that far by American standards. For instance, it costs 400 dollars to fly one way from Accra to Ouagadougou, a distance equivalent to flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We also looked at another bus company that leaves for Ouaga every evening, but the buses in their lot looked as though someone had taken a crowbar to them, so we shied away from that option. It would cost 500 dollars plus the price of gas to get someone to drive us from Kumasi to Mali, an option we seriously considered, but didn’t go with in the end because we couldn’t locate any drivers by just asking around.

Even more unbelievable, when we went to a travel agency in Kumasi to ask for advice on getting to Mali, the woman replies, “Mali… where is that? North Africa?” Um, no. It’s practically next door to your country. And you’re a travel agent. Get with it.

In the meantime, we’ve pretty much been lounging around the hotel enjoying somewhat spotty wireless internet. Today, we went to the Moti Mahal and got delicious Indian food for lunch. All of this eating of various foods has reignited my passion for cooking, and I’m going to try to find ways of doing more of that when I get back to Mali, perhaps starting with stocking up on exotic spices in Bamako.

Yesterday, we had a burger fiasco. We ate a couple of meals at a shiny new restaurant called It’s My Kitchen, just down the street from our hotel. This place has the most attentive service of any restaurant I’ve been in here. The waiters would constantly reassure you that your food was coming, collect your empty bottle the minute the last drop of soda hit the glass, and bring you a plate of nicely folded napkins when they saw your hands were getting messy. Anyhow, for lunch, both Kevin and I ordered the cheeseburger. In the usual attentive manner, the waiter came over and a big communication failure ensued. He was asking us if we wanted chicken with our cheeseburgers, and we’re like, “No, just the burger” (except that it took a lot more confused conversation to get there). So a few minutes later, our burgers come out, and big delicious buns with what looks like a big delicious chicken patty (unexpected, but not totally incredible given our earlier conversation) in the middle. Upon sinking in our teeth, however, we realized that no, it was not a chicken patty, but a third bun, and there was no meat in the thing at all. We called the waiter over and asked about the meat, and confused, he tells us, “But you ordered the cheeseburger…” This is explains why so many places say “beef burger with cheese” on their menu. In the end, we got a couple of chicken patties each on the burgers, and they were delicious, but it was quite the fiasco.

One thing that makes moving around in Ghanaian cities so entertaining are the various store signs, some with English names that don’t quite hit the mark. Some favorites:

-Elite University: Remedial!!! Remedial!!! Remedial!!!
-The Lord’s Casket Furniture Shop
-Afrigirl Unisex Salon
-Ham Florals and Internal Decoration

I’m sure there have been more, but I just can’t think of them now.

On a work note, I finally was able to parse the name of this plant, Abrus precatorius, with pretty red and black (poisonous seeds). It’s called [ɛ̀nɛ̀gìrìndùgǎy], which, I realize, breaks up into /ɛ̀nɛ̀ gìrì-m dùgɔ̌-y/ ‘the jewelry of sheep herders.’ Plus ten.

More photos!

2008-12-10T15:26:00.001-08:00

Here are two new photo albums to illustrate the recent posts. Enjoy!

Pre-travel Mali

Burkina Faso and Ghana

Beach paradise and the jungle

2008-12-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

I apologize that it has taken this long to update. As I suspected, we had no internet on the beach, and the keyboard of the computer where we were in Cape Coast was so jammed that writing a blog post would not have been good for my blood pressure. But here we are in the Ashanti city of Kumasi in Ghana. Let me recap our past week for you. But before I do that, let me say that Kevin and I are both in good health—thanks for all of your concern.

The last installment indicated we were going to a beach town called Busua, and go we did. After trying to reach a couple of resorts on Dixcove to no avail (either the number doesn’t work, is constantly busy, isn’t right… a common occurrence), we settled on a place called the African Rainbow Resort in Busua. We nearly got left behind by the bus in Cape Coast at one of its rest stops, but we ran and jumped on in the nick of time.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at our resort. It was lovely. The room was open and airy, no AC, but naturally ventilated and cooled by the ocean breeze from the balcony. We went down to the beach after settling in and waded in the water. It would be hard to find a more ideal beach. There was no steep drop-off into the water, but rather the warm waves rolled up high onto the flat beach, resulting in a wide wade-able stretch. That day, we had our first run-in with Frank, the juice man, aggressively peddling his juice. More about him later.

The next day, we hit the beach in the late morning and rented body boards from the Black Star Surf Shop. Neither Kevin nor I had ever been body boarding, but it was delightful. The water was warm and the waves weren’t too big, but they were still powerful enough to give you quite a ride. After an hour of that, we were again approached by Frank the Juice Guy, brother of Dan the Pancake Man, and we agreed to go give it a try, since the guidebook had mentioned good things about the pancakes.

He led us back away from the beach to a run-down little house with a couple plastic tables. The steps to getting our pancakes were baffling. We told him what we wanted (“American pancakes with banana and chocolate”), then he told someone else, who came later and asked us too, then some people got in a car, and some guy came back with a plastic bag of bananas… it was as though they had to scour the town for ingredients. But in the end, we each had in front of us a fresh pancake with sliced banana and a bar of melted chocolate (to be spread ourselves), as well as a liter and a half of fresh chunky mango-orange juice. Our walk back to the resort was accompanied by an afternoon rain shower, which turned into a hefty thunderstorm overnight. We spent the rest of the day playing Scrabble and pool and getting eaten by mosquitoes.

Saturday, we got more adventurous with our water sports, and went sea kayaking. The scariest part was getting out of the surf. A young man who worked for the hotel waded out as deep as he could go once I was seated on the kayak to hold me steady and help push me out, but the rather large waves crashing onto me head on capsized me once and pushed me back to shore. The second try, though, after a little bit of screaming and a lot of paddling, I burst through the last wave and found myself on the calm sea behind the surf. Kevin joined me and we paddled serenely out towards the little coastal island.

It was about twenty minutes of paddling when we arrived at the island, steering our red plastic kayaks around a small isthmus of rocks marking out a protected cove to land in. The island was basically a big pile of rocks with a couple of coconut palms and a lot of tide pools. Dozens of crabs would scuttle out of our way as we explored, checking out the black spiny sea urchins in the pools and the cowry shells peppering the sand. After a little while, we took to the sea again, bobbing along the undulating water until the waves pushed us back to land.

We went to the neighboring resort for dinner that night, where they were having a barbecue night, complete with a traditional drum and dance group. I wanted to try their ostrich sausage, but they were out of it, so I had a big plate of corned beef and egg stew with yams, a Ghanaian dish, which was delicious. I even tried Kevin’s grilled lobster and enjoyed it.

Our last full day in Busua, we walked down a muddy jungle bush path to get to the neighboring fishing town of Dixcove. It was much more bustling than Busua, with dozens of wooden fishing boats moored on the rocky shore and a heavy smell of fish and sewage in the air. Sunday was Ghana’s presidential election, and there were a couple of polling stations set up, including one on Fort Metal Cross, Dixcove’s old British slave fort. We took a quick tour of the fort and got the sobering account of how the slaves were kept in a room for three months before being shipped out; if the toilet filled up, they would have to sit with the sewage, if someone died, they would stay in there until the three months were up, and the food was thrown down through a hole in the ceiling. It was chilling.

Kevin and I both had huge burritos and beer at the surf shop for lunch, then went body boarding again. This time, the waves were bigger and our technique was better, and all in all, we were probably in the water for two hours or more.

I was depressed to be leaving the beach the next day. The whole experience was wonderful. I already described the beach, but the hotel itself had a nice atmosphere, with tons of yellow birds weaving grass nests in its gardens. The one thing detracting from the stay was the baffling lack of pina coladas. No where made them, despite the fact that the area is bursting with coconut trees and fresh pineapples, and the hotel bar had rum and a blender. Who knows, but there’s one for the suggestion box.

Monday, we took the advice of the Canadian co-owner of our resort and checked into the Hotel Hacienda outside of Cape Coast. The room was arguably pretty nice, but the feeling of the hotel was dreary and it was far from everything. We went into town for a late lunch then toured their slave fort, Cape Coast Castle, a much bigger one than at Dixcove, with a nicely laid out museum in it. The fort had changed hands many times, originally set up by the Portuguese, then taken over by a progression of the Dutch, Danish, Swedish (who knew?), and finally ending up in the hands of the British. At night, we walked to the local minimart and got snacks which we ate while catching up on our Top 40 hits on a British music channel coming through on their satellite TV.

We decided to change hotels and try out the Hans Cottage Botel, on the road to Kakum National Park. What exactly made it a botel rather than a hotel is unclear. Maybe it was the thatched restaurant on stilts over the crocodile pond, but I don’t know. In any case, it was quite a unique place to stay, with delicious fresh passion fruit juice. In the late afternoon, we took a taxi up to the national park, where we took the walk across the “canopy walkway”, a series of seven rope bridges 40 meters above the forest floor. The bridges swing disturbingly when stepped on, and I had some horror visions of the bridges snapping off their anchor trees, but it was a great way to see the forest. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, though I think I saw an elephant on the way from the taxi.

And to stay true to my roots, I must say that I was in pangolin country, but unfortunately, the critters are nocturnal and I saw none.

We are now in Kumasi, as I said, trying to get back to Mali, but it’s harder than it should be. We asked at the Cape Coast STC bus station when there were buses going from Kumasi to Ouagadougou, but the woman told us we would have to ask in Kumasi. So today we pulled in around 5:30 PM and found out that a bus left at 4:00 and the next won’t be until Saturday. Unless we find another transport company that isn’t suicide to take, we’ll have to hole up here for three nights and hope we get pretty quick transport out of Ouagadougou to Mali.

I will end with a few observations about Ghana in general. First of all, it is incredibly lush. The roads are lined with tons of fruit trees: bananas, oranges, passion fruit vines, papayas, coconuts, plus pineapple groves. Second, Ghana has so many more cars than motorcycles as compared with Mali and Burkina Faso. Finally, just a current events fact, Ghana will be having a run-off election between Nana Akufo-Addo and J. E. Atta-Mills on the 28th of this month, and then we will know who the new president is. Elections for everyone!

On to Ghana

2008-12-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

My African countries list now includes three entries, since we arrived in Ghana late Monday night. Monday morning, we got to the bus station around 7, as we were told. I was feeling sort of sick to my stomach, so I was worried about the trip, but luckily I didn’t have any problems. I was amazed by how nice the bus was—actually air conditioned, plush leather seats, nothing in the aisles, and it left on time. Much better than Mali’s bus services. We immediately knew we were entering a Christian nation when all of the music they played and all of the Ghanaian movies they played had a born-again Christian message that was not subtle in the slightest. Rather surreal after coming from Muslim countries. Also strange was that everything started to be in English, albeit English that is very hard to understand.

Par for the African course, however, were the two separate border crossings, one leaving Burkina and one entering Ghana, that were of course about a kilometer apart. When we got off the bus leaving Burkina, I exchanged a big wad of CFA for Ghana Cedi (1 cedi is a little less than a dollar), and in the meantime the bus pulled away without us, but luckily just to the other side of the stop.

The bus ride took 20 hours altogether, the last four of which neither Kevin nor I were feeling well. Finally, at about 4 in the morning, we arrived in Accra and got a taxi to our hotel. It’s not as nice as it must have been five years ago when my guidebook was written (unfortunately the 2008 edition came out in June of this year), but it does the trick. There was a huge spider on the wall, which Kevin killed for me, but otherwise we slept comfortably.

Unfortunately, Kevin was rather sick and bed-ridden yesterday, but he took a dose of antibiotics and today he’s doing better. Yesterday afternoon, a guy who worked at the hotel took me out to help me find a laundry place, which was much harder than it should have been. The first place we went to didn’t have a machine, only dry cleaning, and the other two places would charge about 50 bucks, wouldn’t wash women’s underwear (oh my God, toxic!), and wouldn’t have it ready until after we planned on leaving. Totally discouraged, I finally just paid the guy 30 bucks to wash it all for us by hand. Hopefully it’ll be ready and dry today, though with this humidity, who knows.

Accra has a much different feel than Burkina and Mali. It definitely has a coastal vibe and is very lush and humid. Lots of palm trees and grass, with Ghanaian high life music playing all around. Today when we were waiting an hour for a restaurant to bake us a muffin (ridiculous), a truck drove by blasting party music, the back filled with young people in identical tee-shirts. It was advertising some sort of health insurance. I never knew health insurance was such a party.

Tomorrow, we’re heading over to Busua to lounge on the beach for a few days. I don’t think we’ll have internet, so stay tuned and I’ll write back as soon as possible.

A plethora of elephants

2008-11-30T04:29:00.000-08:00

Burkina Faso has many faces, and we have seen a few of them in the last few days.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was at a nice restaurant called Le Verdoyant, which was indeed unbelievably popular (the only place I’ve seen so far where reservations are a good idea). There, we stuffed ourselves with lasagna and pineapple and ham pizza that were delicious, even by American standards. By that, I only mean that sometimes here, things taste so delicious because you haven’t had a pizza in months, but really it’s not that good, but this was legitimately tasty.

After doing some research online, we realized that the bus company we had reserved with to go to Ghana might not be such a good idea, as the buses are old and apparently have the highest incidence of crashes. We decided that we would prefer to get to Ghana alive, if possible, so we pushed back our departure one more day and went to change our bus tickets to the STC bus line, leaving Monday morning. After picking up our visas, we went out for Indian food for lunch.

I would not have expected a fine Indian restaurant in the heart of Ouagadougou, but it was there, and it had delicious cocktails as well. Over lunch, we discussed what to do with our extra time in Burkina. The night before, the taxi driver had talked to us about a safari park called Nazinga and gave us his card, in case we needed anything. After looking it up online, we decided it would be a nice day trip, so we called up Sylvain, the driver, and arranged to go the following day.

After going to India for lunch, we took a trip to the American bar life for dinner. We read about a bar not far from our hotel called the Cactus Bar, reputed to serve burgers and play Western music. It turned out to not actually serve burgers of its own, but you could order from the restaurant downstairs, and it played hip hop. But close enough. We were the only people up there, because apparently we’re square enough to hit the town before ten o’ clock, but we had a couple beers, shot a couple games of pool, and got take-out from downstairs brought up to us wrapped in aluminum foil. To continue the classiness, we went downstairs, where they had a legitimate bowling alley, playing Best of the 90s and everything, except instead of having a big Budweiser sign they had a Castel one. Just in case we forgot we were in Africa. We contemplated going out clubbing, but just went to bed instead.

5:30 the next morning, we awoke to the airy tone of my cell phone alarm, and got dressed and ready for our safari in the dark. We were down in the lobby at 6:00, our scheduled departure time, but I forgot that we were in Africa and nothing is actually on time. The driver showed up around 6:45, and we got underway. On our way out of Ouaga, we stopped at a gas station to fill up, and I went into their minimart to buy water. Again, I was amazed by how modern Ouaga is: prices marked on coolers, clean, stocked, computer and scanner to check out… just like the US.

The drive to Nazinga took about 3 hours. The first half was on the freeway up to a town called Po, and from there it was dirt road. After a little nap, Kevin and I played Scrabble all the way up to the park entrance. The park itself is a very large (about 400 sq. miles) area of protected forest and savannah with man-made watering holes, though they also offer hunting safaris there. Once inside the park’s front gate, there was still about 30 kilometers to go to get to the center camp of the park.

At the gate, we had picked up some local student needing to get to the center. About two or three kilometers in, we spotted a couple of elephants off to our right. The driver stopped, and the rest of us (Kevin, the student, and I) scrambled up on top of the 4x4 to get a better view. Unfortunately, the animals were largely obscured by trees, so we kept going with us still on the roof. Let me tell you, the top of a 4x4 is exceedingly uncomfortable, with the metal bars of the baggage rack digging into your butt as the vehicle bumped along disintegrating dirt road. From up there, however, we spotted a couple of monkeys, some baboons, and a couple of antelope before we even got to the heart of the park and picked up our guide. At one point, the road crossed a watering hole, and there were probably more than ten elephants there cooling off, including one big male making quite a presentation of himself (not for the kids to see).

Finally, we made it to the center, where their little collection of cabins overlooks another watering hole, this one also with seven elephants splashing away in it. Before getting back in the car with our guide, we walked down a little path to an observatory they had built looking out over the watering hole, and we observed the elephants for a while from there.

By this point, it was almost 11:30, not the best time of day to see animals, but we had no choice. We piled back into the 4x4 with our guide and took off on more little paths through the brush. We had terrific luck that day. Not far from camp, we saw a troop of probably thirty elephants, as well as various kinds of antelope (bushbucks, duikers, waterbucks, etc.) and many, many species of bird (eagles, wild guinea fowl, Abyssinian rollers, red-throated bee-eaters, parakeets, to name a few).

We ate lunch with our driver in their screened restaurant overlooking the watering hole. From there, we could see a few warthogs snuffling around in the reeds, as well as a few antelope and deer who had come to drink. Then around 2, we hit the road.

The park was in the process of doing controlled burnings to increase visibility, which I had somewhat mixed feelings about. On the way out, we drove past patch after patch of crackling, burning grass, and the sky was dark with all of the smoke. Around the smoke billows, dozens of birds of prey were circling, waiting for the little animals escaping the fire to run out into the open. The driver told us, though, that the burnings were good for the animals too, because in the open, they were safer from hyenas (which we didn’t see) that would ambush them from the grass. I guess controlled burning prevents raging uncontrolled brush fires, too.

Needless to say, it was an amazing trip. We played some more Scrabble on the way back until we ran out of gas a little ways out of Ouagadougou. It wasn’t a big deal, though, we just paid some guy on a bicycle to go up the road and buy a few liters for us. Around dinner time, we pulled back up to our hotel, completely coated in dirt and dust from the road that may not completely come off for days.

We went back to Le Verdoyant for dinner and got more pizza and lasagna, though this time it was like we were invisible, and the plethora of waiters were nearly impossible to wave down. No matter, the food was still delicious.

So from Italy, to India, to the US, to the savannah, Burkina Faso continues to impress me. It makes me wish I were stationed in Ouagadougou.

Ouagadougou, capital of my heart

2008-11-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

Kevin and I are currently on our holiday vacation and have arrived safely in Ouagadougou, the capital of the fine country of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). Tuesday morning, we got up and waited at the side of the freeway for a bus going to Sevare. The bus system in Mali is mind-bogglingly inefficient. No one really knows what time the buses will show up or how many seats they will have open, so you just buy tickets and hope for the best. When the bus came, they had oversold the tickets and we ended up having to stand/sit on a water jug in the aisle, but as luck had it, we were stationed right next to these two white girls who ended up being Peace Corps volunteers from up around Gao. We chatted with them the whole way down, which was nice. So much Peace Corps in our life lately!

We got into Sevare around 2:00 and took our baggage to the Mankan Te Bed and Breakfast, a nice little place off the road to Bamako. As much as we craved a nap, I needed to get my bank business done before it closed and we needed to make reservations to get to Burkina, so we headed out for a long hot walk to the BNDA (Banque Nationale du Developpement Agricole). To my relief, my wire transfer got through just fine and I got the money I needed.

Minkailou and Seydou, neither of whom I had seen for over a month, came and met us there and we went to Mopti together to try to nail down our bus departure. Arriving at the bus station, we got another dose of bus efficiency. First, the people selling the tickets had all left to pray or something, then when they came back, it turned out that the bus that was supposed to leave the next day hadn't gotten in yet, even though the man had told Minkailou just three days ago that buses left Mon Wed Fri. They told us we could take a bus from Sevare to Koro, then get on a vehicle to Ouahigouya then change there to go to Ouaga, but after some consideration, we decided to live the high life and rent a car. In the end, despite the cost, I think it was the best option.

The taxi came and picked us up at our hotel at 9:00 on Wednesday morning. It was a slightly beat up (as most cars are here) Mercedes 190. We took off on the road to Bandiagara, after which we left the paved roads behind and bumped along a dirt road like the one heading to Borko. It was hot and I felt sort of car sick, but all in all, not as bad as a bus would have been.

It turns out that it is not just buses that are inefficient in Mali; the border crossing was equally amazing. We stopped at what I assumed was the border, where we had to show our passports to the police, who in turn wrote down all of our information in their little book. They couldn't even tell which one of us was Kevin and which was Laura (I'm thinking, "Well, the one that's a MAN is Kevin..."). But we got through without being shaken down for any bribes. Then, another fifteen minutes up the road, we stop at yet another border crossing, where again we get out and have to show our passports, and again the guy writes down our information. A little further up, the driver has to get out and show vehicle registration (as he did at the first border crossing) and then a third time he has to stop about another half a kilometer up, not to mention the toll stop. Kevin and I are thinking, "Why don't they just put all of the checks in the same place?" but that would clearly be far too easy.

Driving into Burkina was impressive. The roads are well-paved with electricity lines running for kilometers alongside of them, and even the somewhat small towns we passed through had stoplights. Certainly a change from Mali. After 7 hours in the Boss Mobile, we rolled in to Ouagadougou around 4 and pulled up at our hotel.

I had made reservations, but they got the date wrong, as well as my phone number to call me. For a couple minutes, I thought we were going to have a real problem, but they shifted some stuff around and fit us in. The hotel is pretty nice, with a beautiful pool in a shady courtyard surrounded by African animal carvings. There is even wireless internet, though a lot of pages won't load on it for some reason (which explains why I am currently in a cyber cafe).

This morning we got up and went out to get our Ghanaian visas. Ouagadougou feel much more developed than Bamako. Nice roads, taller buildings, less trash, and things run more efficiently. We got our passport photos done no problem, then headed to the embassy. There, as opposed to filling out three different copies of the same form, they actually had carbon copies, and we got our business done quickly--should be ready for pick up tomorrow.

After getting back to the hotel, we both decided to get our hair cut at their salon. I was the first in the chair. The haircut probably took no more than 10 minutes, which speaks for the quality. Layers? Forget it. I was lucky that it ended up sort of evenly hacked off above the chin. Oh well, at least it's lighter. Kevin wanted his hair buzzed, which should not have been hard, but it ended up taking probably almost an hour. She tried going to town with the rasor first, but his hair just clogged it, so we suggested she cut it short and then buzz it, and even then it took much longer than buzzing should. It worked out in the end and it looks good, but Kevin said she kind of pulled some of his hair out in the process.

While waiting for him to be buzzed, I got a pedicure and watched the Last Legion dubbed in French on the TV. The girl was really overzealous with the pummice stone/nail file/foot buffer; basically anything that sanded off parts of your feet, she was a big fan of. I just had to tell her to stop when she pulled out the fourth sanding device. I prefer to keep some skin on my feet. That being said, my feet are extremely soft now.

After such adventures, we were starving and had some pizza, beer and ice cream at the hotel restaurant, then slept it off. We wanted to go swimming, but the water was too cold without the sun on it. We'll try again tomorrow.

Then this evening, in an effort to find the internet cafe noted in my guide book, we set out walking. We fortuitously ended up at the grocery store across from the big mosque, which puts any grocery store in Bamako to shame. So big. So much stuff. So clean. We could not for the life of us find the internet cafe, though. Where we thought it should be, there was just a surprising stretch of open space in the middle of the city with some weeds growing on it. We asked at the hotel, and I guess they razed that district. Ouaga development in progress, I guess.

After this, we are off to a restaurant which is apparently "unbelievably popular" and serves pizza and pasta. Never too much pizza.

We are village trekkers

2008-11-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

Kevin and I got back from the village yesterday afternoon. For being a 48 hour trip, it was quite eventful. Where to begin?

We got up with the sun on Thursday morning to set out. With the rainy season over, the direct route is now navigable by motorcycle. Unlike the route via Borko, however, the direct way doesn’t have a solid road and is full of sand and dry river beds and rocks, thus I cannot drive it. We commissioned Oumar and another motorcycle to take us to the base of the cliff, from where we would carry on by foot. The road getting there was certainly exciting. Instead of taking the freeway, you go out the backside of town and drive along a little dirt track, surrounded by fields and huge boulders as you go deeper into the valley. After about an hour, we arrived where the motorcycle could go no further. It was a little Borko-esque oasis, with a clear stream full of tiny minnows and palms and the echoes of abundant birdsong. There Oumar and company left us, and we started our trek.

The first part of the hike to the village is scaling the mountain. It is like using a Stair Master for an hour straight, but the views are amazing. On the way up, we came across a young man named Hamma carrying a huge basket of millet on his head. He was from Ambile, the village at the top of the cliff, but he took it upon himself to get us all the way to Tongo-Tongo. When we got to his village, he took us into his house and offered us food and water, all of which I perhaps impolitely refused, not wanting to get sick. As is usual in a village I haven’t been to before, all of the children gathered around to stare at us. Finally, we kept going and got to Tongo-Tongo after about another hour’s hike. Overall, from the base of the cliff to my village, it’s about 10 kilometers, so we got our exercise.

Like always, the villagers were very glad to see me and were quite curious to see Kevin. He even picked up a little bit of the elaborate greetings. Ramata’s mother brought us lunch when we got there, millet paste with hibiscus calyx sauce, the first time I’ve actually eaten the staple food in the village itself. Surprisingly, both Kevin and I found it to be quite tasty, though I certainly wouldn’t want to eat it at every meal like the villagers do.

When we arrived, M. le Maire informed me that it was the last day of the millet harvest, so if I wanted to see it at all, we would have to go then. Exhausted as I was from the 10 kilometer hike, I pulled myself together to walk another 4 kilometers round trip to see the field where they were harvesting. In the end, I’m glad I did. There were probably a dozen people in the field, all with little hand knives that they used like garden sheers, only the other blade was the thumb. I tried my hand at harvesting a spike or two, but mainly just succeeded in getting the fiber-glass-like hairs of the millet spike lodged in my thumb. I was told that the field I had farmed a little bit at the beginning of the summer had given a good harvest and I had been deemed good luck. After harvesting a bit, M. le Maire took me to where the heaped all of the harvested millet spikes and sorted them by kind to be tied into bundles and taken back to the village. I saw the little black and white dog sleeping there by the millet, and he actually looked cute. Little did I know…

Anyway, once back in the village, we just hung out and chatted for a little while. We made a can of chili I’d brought for dinner and ate it with some bread and Laughing Cow cheese. I was told that the women were planning on dancing for us that night, something I’d been wanting to see ever since I first got there. Around 8 o’ clock, Ramata’s mother came into my house, as she is wont to do, and brought us a pitcher of millet porridge, which I tried to politely refuse, since I know it has some unboiled water in it, but she insisted on leaving it for us and told us that they were indeed going to dance. In an effort not to be rude, I boiled the porridge to kill off whatever might have been in it, and Kevin and I both ate a bit, though I can’t say as it was exactly good.

At about 9, the dance was preparing in our courtyard. A couple young women had stretched a mat out under the hanger with a big hollow calabash on it to be used as the drum. The celebration started slowly, Ramata’s mother and a dozen girls singing call and response songs in Tommo-So to the pounding beat of the calabash. At intervals, everyone would start clapping a rhythm and someone would go into the middle of the circle to dance, hands extended in front and butt extended in back, stomping a syncopated rhythm with the feet. Eventually the music picked up and they brought out the beautiful calabash covered in cowry shells to use as a percussion instrument. I was pulled into the circle to dance a couple of times, though I was basically just randomly stomping around and probably looked ridiculous. They eventually gave Kevin and I some chairs to sit down and watch the dance unfold under a million stars, punctuated by the occasional meteor. The dance participants slowly changed from mostly girls of 11 or 12 to the older women who would enter the circle and dance with much zeal. Ramata’s grandmother was an interesting spectacle. She would periodically go into the circle and drop on her knees or dance around, her shirt falling off of her shoulders until someone gently removed her to the sidelines. The whole occasion was filled with things I didn’t understand, people throwing down shawls in front of other people, women dropping to their knees and touching someone’s feet, twos and threes of women coming in and dancing determined by some system I didn’t understand. The only thing keeping me from totally enjoying it was the fact that I had gotten up at 6 am and walked 14 kilometers that day, yet the dance went on until past midnight, when Kevin and I excused ourselves for bed.

The next day before lunch, Bureima took Kevin and I over to the next village of Entaga, where we had our fortunes read by a man with bushy hair and one skewed eye named Binna Mousa. He reads fortunes in the traditional way of spreading out cowry shells and reading their alignment. We were ushered across his courtyard, carpeted by broken millet stems, into his little mud house, where I sat on a beautifully carved Dogon stool. Our fortunes were entirely positive and largely work related, or so we gleaned from the game of telephone that was the translation of the fortune. Binna Moussa told Bureima in Tommo-So, Bureima told me in broken French, then I translated the broken French into English. Basically, Kevin and I will both be successful in our work, as will Kevin’s sister. There will be no problems and people will travel around in my name. However, in order to make this come true, there are specific offerings we have to make: Kevin must give one white cola nut to an old man or woman, and I have to give seven tamarind fruits to a beggar child. Then we will be “bosses”.

Ramata’s mother made us delicious beans for lunch, then we headed into the village and out into the fields to look around. I showed Kevin the animist fetish, like a giant mud finger pointing to the sky, out behind the village. By the toguna, the round pagoda-like place where the men sit and discuss, they had slaughtered a sheep and the really old guy was hacking at the carcass with an ax. Later we sat down on the rock that was probably covered in sheep’s blood, but so it goes.

We went up the big hill that gives cell phone service and placed Scrabble in the shade of a rocky overhang. In the distance, the towering cliffs around Douentza jutted faintly above the horizon. We made our way back to the village as the sun set. After a dinner of more beans, we sat out under the stars with Ramata’s mother, and for the first time since I got here, my Tommo-So was good enough to actually carry on a decent conversation. She said it was getting cold here, but I told her it was very cold where I am from, and that the water “sleeps” (is frozen) for three months straight. Confused, she asked, “Doesn’t the sun come out?” and I told her it does, so she asked “Doesn’t it have any strength?” and not knowing what to say, I just agreed that it had no strength. Then she asked if all of the water in Bamako (the Niger River) went all the way to the United States. I told her no, we have a lot of water, but it’s not the same water. Then she told me about her children, about Ramata’s older sister who died and how beautiful she was, how Ramata would get married when she was done with school… I look forward to my Tommo-So getting even better and being able to really chat.

Our second night’s sleep was awful. While the first night we were there, the night air was cool and refreshing, the second night was stuffy and awful. On top of that, the once cute little dog chose the spot in front of my door to stand and bark incessantly around 3 in the morning. I wanted to go out and throw a rock at it, or shoot it or something (though I am generally against violence towards animals), but I was afraid of it. We woke up haggard at 6:30 and got ready for the return trip.

The walk to Ambile seemed a lot shorter, since we weren’t already exhausted from the climb. On the way, we passed then fell behind then passed a man from Anji carrying a chicken on his bicycle who was also going to Douentza. On our way down the cliff, we got lost. We were following a little dirt trail, but suddenly it turned into a sheep path and we were on a rocky field with a little stone house and no sign of the right road. After clambering up onto rocks in hopes of looking down onto the path, we finally retraced our steps through what I think was a cemetery, until we found where we had gone wrong. Finding the route down the cliff was all about finding the man-made rock piles, very barely distinguishable from natural piles, that indicated where one should climb down.

With aching knees and sweaty backs, we made it down to the bottom a little after 11, and we waited by the stream and played Scrabble until our rendez-vous with the motorcycles at noon. While waiting, a local farmer picked a couple of guavas and gave them to me, one of which was sour and unripe and the other of which was the most delicious guava I’ve ever tasted.

The roads were rather crowded on the way back with people going to Douentza for the market. Women walk the whole way from the village to Douentza with huge sacks of grain on their heads, and I have no idea how the make it down the cliff like that. It makes you feel like a wuss for being tired from your backpack.

A village for two and some linguistics

2008-11-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, Kevin and I are off to the village for a couple nights. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, so I need to greet the people. I’ve prepared the dictionary sections I couldn’t really do here to get them done there with photos (guns, jewelry). Time for some millet beer, some Bug Hut 2, and a whole bunch of greetings.

Things are okay in town. I got some more elicitation done with M. Guindo, who was kind enough to send us a gigantic bag full of peanuts. I’ve been thinking a lot about tone lately, and have discovered some things. First, it seems that to explain the tone classes of verbs, there must be a specified low tone that links to the first mora and the high tone to the second (which then spreads). It would otherwise seem odd to have the H link to the first mora in some cases and the second in others. Then you would have to specify some empty slot that just gets filled in as L on the surface. Seems weird. Also, I’ve noticed that in nouns with a LH tone contour, the H links to the last mora, so if you have a heavy (bimoraic) final syllable, you will get a rising tone on it. For instance: /tòndòó/ ‘water jar’. I used to think the whole final syllable was H, but it’s not.

Besides that, I’m finally sorting out all of these infinitives/verbal nouns that have been plaguing me. It seems that /stem + -dim/ is an infinitive, as in:

/núyɔ́-dìm m̀bɛ́-gó wɔ̀-m/ ‘I like to sing’
sing-Inf like-GO be-1sgS (Still don’t know what the GO is)

And then there are two gerundive forms that can be used in the same context as above, but also can be possessed. These change the final vowel of the stem to /i/ and add either /-lé/ or /-yé/. The prior form changes the tone to all H, while the latter has a LH contour. For instance:

/jòbù jɔ́bí-lé wómɔ̀ síɛ́-ǹ/
running run-Ger his good-Copula
‘his running is good’

or

/jòbù jɔ̀bí-yé wómɔ̀ síɛ́-ǹ/
running run-Ger his good-Copula
‘his running is good’

Here we also see the common pattern in Dogon of having a verb with a cognate noun, so you run a run, sing a song, write a writing, etc. Most of the time, the infinitive and the gerunds can be used in the same contexts. As in English, we can say “To run is good” or “Running is good”, but where the two separate is that the gerund can be used as a noun and thus can be possessed (His running is good) but the infinitive cannot (*His to run is good). Perhaps my two gerund forms will end up being different in the end as well, but for now they seem entirely interchangeable.

We finally met Peace Corps Dave, which was great. We went out and got a few beers on Monday night after running into him at the internet, then he came over to our house for lunch the next day. After eating, we went and checked out the Peace Corps house, and I got to borrow some books, including a Fulfulde textbook, which should be very helpful. It was great to make friends with another American in the area.

In other news, Oumar was apparently arrested for a couple hours for hitting a kid and his mom. That’s the story other people have told me. We went to try to visit him in jail, but apparently he’d been released. I saw him later, he said he’d only been held for a couple hours, and that what really happened was that he was at work plastering a wall and some kid was messing it up, so he kind of flung the kid aside, then his mom got angry and was threatening to beat him with her huge wooden pestle, so he pushed her too. The truth is probably somewhere in between. I was pretty worried for a little while there, since Oumar makes everything run so smoothly for me here, I don’t know what I’d do if he got legitimately arrested. Plus, he’s my friend, so that would suck. But it seems that all’s well that ends well, and everything is back to normal now.

Crocodiles

2008-11-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

This weekend, Kevin and I went on an adventure. And by that, I mean that the two of us helmeted up and took off on the motorcycle to the village of Borko, tucked into one of the hills on the long way to my village. Borko is a little terrestrial paradise. Unlike the arid land around it, there are several natural springs there, so it stays green all year long. In those streams lies Borko’s biggest claim to fame: crocodiles.

Now, before I went, I wasn’t certain what these reptiles were going to be. They call them “caimans” in the local French, and I thought they might just be Nile monitor lizards, but I assumed that would be interesting anyway.

The whole trip was like an exam of everything I have learned since I got here: driving the motorcycle, finding a village, greeting the chief, navigating in Tommo-So, and I passed on all accounts, I think. The first half of our time there, I didn’t speak any French at all. Borko is actually in the Najamba zone, but the language is closely related and a lot of people speak/understand Tommo-So, since it’s the next zone over.

Anyhow, we pulled up to the village around 11 AM and parked the motorcycle under a tree a little walk from the village itself. Walking up, all of the people saw us and smiled, then I would greet them in Tommo-So and they would give a little “Eh!” of surprise as their faces lit up. Half the time, the greetings were an incomprehensible mixture of Najamba and Tommo and I probably botched a lot of it, but it’s the thought that counts.

We came up to the first village and I asked some kids where the chief was. Tromping through a harvested millet field, we arrived in their streets, and I conversed with this man for a while about where I was from, what we’d come to do, where the chief had went, etc. Turns out, the chief had gone to the fields, but he showed me his three wives (“the red (=light-skinned) one, the dark one, and the other one”) and they gave Kevin and I both big handfuls of peanuts.

Somehow, throughout the course of this, it became clear that we were in the wrong village. Borko is comprised of three little villages, and we needed to walk up to the next one to see the crocs, which we did. There, we gave the chief a bag of kola nuts and 1000 CFA as a gesture of goodwill, then negotiated with the actual village guide (who spoke to me only in French and was much less friendly than everyone else—perhaps a by-product of too much tourism?) to show us the crocodiles for another 5500 CFA ($11).

That covered the cost of the hunks of raw goat meat we picked up with the butcher to feed to the crocodiles. Having done that, the guide ushered us through a little bamboo gate to an open area, where already one large crocodile was sun-bathing, some little water plants stuck to its scaly head. I was startled. Here I was expecting monitor lizards, and three feet in front of me is a legitimate crocodile or alligator or something of the sort.

The guide started clucking and grunting; out of the bushes, one, then two, then three more crocodiles scrambled in for the feast. Two of the them were rather small, probably about 2-3 feet long, but the other two were probably closer to 5 feet. I thought at one point one of them was going to bite my foot off, since it was getting a little close and curious for comfort, but I stepped back and it became more interested in the meat the guide was throwing into their jaws.

These animals are the village’s totem. The guide told me that back in the war with the Mande several hundred years ago, when the Dogon were driven up into the cliffs for safety, the crocodiles helped them cross the river, and ever since then, they’ve been their totem. They don’t hurt the crocodiles—doing so would be hurting the village. In fact, he told me that if anyone killed a crocodile, he would be killed. He also said the crocodiles slept with people at night, but I’m not certain what he meant by that. Finally, if they find a dead one, they bury it as if it were a human.

So because they are so protected and just get fed meat all the time, they are rather tame. We even got to touch one! I wasn’t sure I was going to leave with both my hands, but I did, and the whole experience was rather magical.

Douentza routine and tiny animals

2008-11-13T08:09:00.001-08:00

Nothing much new to report here. I continue to do a couple hours of work in the morning, slowly checking those words off of my list. Recent additions have been in the lexical domains of sleeping, pointed objects, hanging, and vehicles. All very exciting.

I saw a tiny baby goat being carried by a tiny child this morning. That was a whole bunch of cute. Part of me wants a baby goat as a pet here, but I know it will just cry all the time and then someone, if not me, will eat it. So it probably isn’t that great of an idea. Best just admire the baby goats of others.

Kevin and I watched Office Space last night, which is quite a different world from Mali. We’ll probably head out on Burkina Faso and Ghana adventuring in a couple of weeks.

Birthdays in Africa

2008-11-11T08:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Kevin’s birthday. Certainly the first birthday (of anyone’s) I’ve celebrated in Africa! While there was no birthday cake to be found, we did have a good day, I think. I got him a traditional African board game that is akin to mankala (it’s called Wali here) played by dropping little seeds or beans into various holes around the board, which we have now been playing to determine who will be the ultimate Bean Master. We’re even.

After lunch, we played some Scrabble, then took a little motorcycle ride up the road. We went up past Petaka and turned off the road where there was a good photo opportunity for Gandamine (spelling?), these big fingers of rock that jut up beside a large cliff. Being late afternoon, the light was really beautiful. It was also his first chance to really get out into the open and see big herds of goats and horned cows and all the other pretty things the Malian countryside has to offer. Then after dinner, we celebrated with the neighbors over a couple beers.

This morning, M. Guindo, Ramata’s old lodger, came over and I got a little bit of work done. I have to keep forging forward, after all.

I did find some guavas in the market on Sunday, though. And I successfully navigated the market with just Kevin and I—only toobobs. I realize now that very seldom if ever did I go to the market by myself without a Malian friend. Now I can use my little bits of Fulfulde or Tommo-So enough to give myself some street cred and avoid excessive toobob prices. Like with the guava lady, she looked like she was Dogon, so I greeted her with a generic Dogon greeting “poh”, which she replied to in Jamsay and I continued in Tommo-So. That’s the thing with Dogon greetings. The words are different, but the general structure is the same, so you can go back and forth in two languages. It would be like:

A: Hello.
B: Bonjour, ca va?
A: I’m fine.
B: La famille va bien?
A : They’re fine. How are you?
B: Ca va bien.

But everyone knows what’s going on. Also I can ask how much something is, but I don’t really know my numbers that well, so I’m at the mercy of whoever’s selling to give me correct change. By asking “how much” in a native language, though, they assume I know what’s up, so they always give me the right change. But that’s my little secret that I wouldn’t know the difference.