Full house

We’re back to a pretty full house here in Douentza. My reign as mistress of the house ended when both Abbie and Jeff returned yesterday, with Minkailou as well, so that puts the number of lodgers here at five. Kirill will be coming back on Thursday, just in time for the fourth, so then we’ll be full to the gills. It’s nice to have some other Americans to keep me company, and so good to see Abbie so we can talk and decompress. Last night, we all sat in the AC room and watched the opera Carmen on my computer. Jeff certainly likes him some opera, with a glass of wine, singing along : « toreador, toreador ».

It was market day yesterday in Douentza, my first market day here. The town was buzzing with sights and smells and people from all over the region. Seydou and I went out in the morning to pick up our weekly supply of cucumbers and green peppers, and even then, the streets were so crowded you had to elbow your way through. In the afternoon, Abbie, Seydou, Minkailou and I headed out on mission Get Nice Clothes Made for the 4th of July. We bought cloth and took it to the tailor to have an outfit made for each of us. We figured Jeff would probably gripe half-seriously about the guys not needing new clothes, so we had it be our secret mission. When we came back in the evening, Jeff was sitting outside the door and asked what we were up to in the market and where everything was we bought. We just laughed it off and ran inside. He’s kind of the dad of the project here.

Work is going well now. It’s still rather fatiguing doing four hours of elicitation, but I feel like I’m making progress. Jeff sat with Ramata and I for a while this morning and we went over some verb paradigms to try to find the basic verb form ; I was encouraged by the fact that my ear wasn’t too far off in terms of tone. Baby steps…

Slight correction on the address. The order of address constituents should rather be :

Laura McPherson
Cercle de Douentza, Region de Mopti
Mali, West Africa

I would put West Africa, as I don’t trust the post office to know the difference between Bali, Mali and Malawi, and God knows it’ll already take long enough for letters to get here without being shipped to Southeast Asia first.

With the rains and wind, the air temperature has finally cooled down a bit, which is a blessing. If there’s no wind, it can still be hard to fall asleep at night, but it’s a world of improvement over the beginning of the month. Now it's nearly pleasant to sit in the courtyard listening to the chatter of a dozen little red finches that inhabit our tree. I much prefer their cheeping to the obnoxious screaming of that goat in Tongo-Tongo. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I hope they sold it at the last market.

Stormy weather

We have had a couple of power outages in the last few days. I think there might be some sort of oil crisis here—I hear they were rationing gasoline in Bandiagara, so maybe that has something to do with the power outages? In any case, hopefully oil doesn’t dry up completely in the next year, leaving me stranded over here lest I want to take a steam ship home.

I had one more scorpion sighting last night, in the doorway of the AC room. Again, I called for Seydou, and he crushed it, and I was paranoid for the next few hours. That’s just how it goes. But funny how things that can actually hurt you (scorpions, mosquitoes) put other things that are just gross (spiders) in perspective. Here, I’ll shake the hand of any spider that wants to eat malaria-ridden mosquitoes.

Yesterday we had a bit of a dust/rain storm, as they happen here. If you go up on the roof, you can see them brewing in the west—a big brown wall of dust that advances with a strong wind and lightning, leaving rain in its wake. Apparently we haven’t had too bad of a storm yet. There are times, apparently, where the sky turns red or black and you can’t even see 2 feet in front of you. Crazy.

Douentza is a fun little town. Well, there’s nothing to do, per se, but at least there are shops where you can get cold drinks and there’s electricity and internet. It’s also quite pretty, surrounded by cliffs. If you go up on our roof, you look out over a sea of mud brick houses and neem trees to the big cliffs jutting up not so far off.

Abbie comes home tomorrow from the bush; it will be very good to see her, having gone almost three weeks apart. Jeff should be back either tomorrow or Monday, and then Kirill on Tuesday, and our whole little clan is back together again to celebrate the 4th. After that, I think the plan is to go up to Gasa (spelling?) to hunt down some elephants. That will most definitely rock.

Oh, and now mail just became easier! Here's a blast from the past: my "address" is simply

Mlle Laura McPherson
Région de Mopti, Cercle de Douentza
Mali

That's it. And they'll just hold stuff for me at the post office. If only we could do that in the US: Laura McPherson, Los Angeles, USA. Yeah right.

Scorpion City

Jeff and Minkailou took off to Tabi for a few days of work, leaving me as mistress of the house with Seydou to help out. It’s been rather quiet with just the two of us, but relaxing. Work in the morning, hanging out in the afternoon, maybe a nap, music in the evening.

The rainy season has definitely started. Now there’s a chance of rain basically every day. That means we’re getting into insect time. Jeff had a room of the house redone for me (and maybe Abbie, if she spends any great amount of time here), so with a bookshelf and wall hooks, I could finally unpack. I got a mosquito net here too so I don’t have to constantly transport the tent in and out. Now my beloved Bug Hut 2 stays in the hanger and the mosquito net stays indoors.

My room (my palace, that is, since they call me princess here) is all great, except for an escapade last night. It was sort of cool outside, so I decided I would sleep inside. However, when I got in, I saw something scuttling, and for a second I thought it might have been one of these horrible-looking spider-like things, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be a little scorpion. Of course I screamed for Seydou to come in and kill it, which he did, but that definitely also killed my desire to sleep inside, because I was convinced there was another one that had scuttled under my mat and that would be in the mosquito net with me. Instead, I opted for my trusty Bug Hut 2, which had been zipped up all day, and I slept quite comfortably in the hanger. Seriously, scorpions are awful. What convinced nature to make such a thing?

I’m beginning to be able to converse a bit on Tommo-So. Ramata came over for elicitation this morning, as usual, and slowly, I was able to construct novel sentences. I found a new minimal pair today, too: lizard – gem (LH) and black – gem (H). This led to fun sentences like “the black lizard chatted” : gem gem ge digem kani.

Other than scorpion paranoia and occasional elicitation frustration, all is well.

On the subject of pictures

The internets here are mighty slow. I may have to snail mail home a CD and have one of you fine folks make an album for the world to see.

The village

Question: can a young woman born and raised in the US survive for 10 days in the bush in Africa without electricity or running water during the hot dry season? Answer: yes. I return victorious.
So much has happened in the last couple of weeks, it’s hard to even know what to say. So I will try to keep this to the most interesting or noteworthy events that have transpired. Two weeks ago on Friday, Jeff, Ramata, Seydou and I set out for Tedie, the village I will work in. We hired an SUV to drive us out there. Let me tell you, if you like off-roading or extreme sports like that, then Mali is for you. On-roading in Mali is like off-roading. The highway, "goudron", is okay (though full of potholes), but once you turn off and head into the bush, the only way to tell the difference between what’s road and what’s not road is where there are already other tracks from motorcycles or donkey carts. It’s a miracle anyone knows where they’re going. We only broke down once on the way over, and it happened to be in this little paradise known as Borko. There were streams flowing, fields of corn, mango trees, brilliant blue birds. We were there for about an hour as Seydou hitched a motorcycle to the nearest town for some roap, after which he and driver rigged something up and we were on our way again.

After that, the road started to climb, and soon we were up on the plateau with the flat plains of Mali stretching out through the dust below us. The rocks up there are amazing. Big shelves of rock, huge flat boulders that conceivably tumbled from somewhere, though it’s not clear where. Little villages along the road where kids spot you and yell out "Ca va?" Finally, we arrived at my village. It turns out, Tedie is kind of like the collection of villages up there, but each individual neighborhood of houses has a different name. I live in Tongo-Tongo. It’s just a smattering of stone and mud houses perched up on the rock shelf. But more about that later.

When we got there, we were given seats in the "hanger", kind of like a shed or covered outdoor area, and the important men of the village (the chief, the former mayor, the school director) gathered to discuss my future. Jeff showed them his research authorization and they welcomed me warmly. They said the hanger was mine to use and give me a couple rooms in what later seemed to be the building where teachers are lodged at times. My house there is made of stone covered in "banko", a mixture of mud, sand, and manure, with a dirt floor. It’s hot as hell inside most of the time, but it does the trick for housing my stuff. Most of the day you spend outside.
Anyhow, life there is slow and quiet. There’s no electricity, so there’s no lights at night, no television, no fans. You just have what nature gives you—if a wind kicks up (which it often does, being at such a high elevation), it cools down, the full moon lights up at night. People have flashlights and stuff, and little radios, but it’s really like stepping back in time. Most of the day, though, I didn’t even notice the lack of electricity. Honestly, a lot of the time, there’s just no need. But when the afternoon became sweltering and I wanted to take a nap inside, I would have killed for a fan or some air conditioning.

Sleeping there was also not the most comfortable. It’s too hot to sleep inside, but if you sleep outside, chances are a huge wind will sweep through at some point during the night and pelt you with sand and dust, at which point you move inside and swelter. So every night it’s a question of: do I take my chances with the wind and enjoy at least a little bit of cool sleep, even if I have to move at some point? Or do I stay in one place but sweat like a dog? I vacillated between the two.
The one good thing about the hot, dry season is that there are nearly no insects. Just flies. But with the advent of the rains, we will start getting mosquitoes and I will enter my long period of hypochondria. Here in Douentza, it still hasn’t rained, but the first rain of the rainy season came last night in Tongo-Tongo. More about that later. Anyhow, in the morning, you wake up with the sunrise because that's when the hundreds of animals that live all around you start crying. There's this stupid goat that's tied up in the courtyard over who has a kid whose not tied up, so in the morning, the damn thing starts shrieking until the baby returns, then they converse. And then there are the roosters who insist on crowing two feet from your head as you try to sleep. Not to mention the people who start coming through with the greetings the minute it's light out. No, no, sleeping in is not an option. On the other end, I'm completely wiped out by 9 or 10 at night. Very strange for me.

Anyhow, the people of Tongo-Tongo are great. At least the men. The women in the bush work like dogs. It makes me angry to see their life—one of two wives, seven or eight kids, working all day while the men sit in the hanger and drink tea. But what can I do? I discuss with people—that’s what you do in the evening, you sit around and chat, the "causerie". I’ve gotten up on my soapbox about women’s rights, and that’s about all I can do. I’m treated as kind of a separate caste there. They don’t know what to make of me. First of all, white skin. The kids are scared of me and also laugh when they see me. The women also laugh at me. Why don’t I have any children? Why do I sit with the men all day and drink tea? For the moment, I just have to do what keeps me sane, and that’s to talk with the people who are talking, namely the men.

The village chief is this old man with kind eyes and grey hair. He doesn’t speak any French, but as I progress with my Tommo-So, I can talk to him a bit. I can at least get through the greetings. Dogon greetings are an elaborate ritual that depends on the time of day and that happens whether you haven’t seen someone for three hours or for three days. Sometimes I mess up and use the wrong time of day "how are you" equivalent, but for the most part, I’m good now. Otherwise in Tommo-So, I can say simple things like "I’m not going to the market today", "Aren’t you going to bathe?", "No thank you". I’m getting used to the rhythm of the language too, so now when I listen to people talking, I have the impression that I understand, even when I don’t. People are patient with me, though, and try to help. There are other people who speak French, too, at varying degrees. Everywhere from people who speak no French, to Solomon who can say some things and calls me Yora, to Monsieur Mousa, the little teacher who never tires of talking. People say he’s a "fou gueri", a cured crazy. Not sure entirely how crazy he was, but he certainly can keep on talking for hours about the situation of the teachers in Mali, the state of affairs in the world, his prayers, everything. It’s quite a cast of characters there. Then there are the old toothless women who come by with their eyes askew, who greet me then say things to me that I don’t understand and laugh at my blank stare. There’s an adorable two-year-old boy named Samba who tromps through and treats me with caution. All little kids here are naked from the waste down, basically. So many naked kids. Then there’s the other two-year-old boy, Noun, who always has snot under his nose and who is much more of a terrible two than Samba.
Sometimes we go out walking to the neighboring villages—Anju, Entaga, Gene—to greet the elders and show me off. People get such a kick out of the fact that I can greet and say my name in Tommo-So. When I’m actually able to communicate, it’ll be great.

Seydou and I took off to the market at Mory one day, which was my first time on a motorcycle. I was half terrified, half having a great time. Again, these are the non-roads we’re talking about, with rocks and sand and pebbles, but Seydou is a good driver and I felt safe enough.

Communication, however, is a problem. There is nearly no cell phone network, and the service I have, Orange, doesn’t work at all. Malitel works if you climb up this big hill and go over to the rock with the forked stick stuck in it that you hang the cell phone on (as if that makes it work). Even then, service is spotty. That I don’t like. I don’t like being in the middle of nowhere, unable to communicate. My grandfather passed away the Saturday after I arrived, and I couldn’t get ahold of my family more than to hear them say that. When I heard that, I wanted to come back quickly, so Seydou decided he would stay longer and we would go back together that Friday on motorcyle and foot down the hill. However, come Thursday, when we called Jeff to make sure things were in order, he told us he decided motorcyles were too dangerous and that we would have to wait until Monday when he would send the SUV. That was a discouraging moment, to be sure.

There were other discouraging moments too. For example, that Friday, there was the inauguration of the new school and there was a big dance being held. Seydou and I went over to see, but the people who were effectively the bouncers yelled at Seydou to put away the camera and then demanded money. And there were about 200 children surrounding me, touching my skin. It’s at moments like that you wish you weren’t white. Why couldn’t I stand there and watch the dance like everyone else? But I guess these are the monsters created by tourism. For the most part, I haven’t had problems like that, though. My white skin is a novelty, but not really a curse.

Food in the village gets monotonous. We bring in rice and pasta so I can avoid millet paste (which is not good, it turns out), but rice, macaroni, rice, macaroni gets old really quickly and leaves you with no desire to eat. Twice we bought chicken to get a bit of protein, but I still have been losing weight. Seydou tries to force feed me, but I have no desire to eat my body weight in rice. On the subject of chicken, meat is very fresh here. As in, an hour before, the rooster is alive, being held by its feet, then its throat is cut and it’s plucked in front of you. It doesn’t get much more fresh than that.

But about the rain. Seydou and I had gone inside to split my headphones and listen to my discman last night because a wind had come up, and about fifteen minutes later, the rain came outside, then it started raining inside. The water came right through the roof, taking the mud with it. We scrambled to get the mattresses into the dry part of the house as the rest of it became a muddy mess. I had mud water in my hair and my clothes and we just stood there, watching it rain. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too discouraged. I think by that point, my skin had thickened to circumstances a bit. Anyhow, we got someone to open the room next door, which was dry, and we managed to sleep in there.

But in general, at night before the moon comes up, there are more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s absolutely beautiful. And you’re out there, surrounded by trees and dirt and rocks, and it’s an exhilerating feeling. Work is coming along. I’m in good spirits. But it’s good to be out of the village and back in Douentza. I’ll be here until after the 4th of July, so more constant updates in the meantime.

RE: the discussion of pangolins in the comments. Mark my words, I shall seek them out, even if I have to go to Ghana to do it, and I will avenge the name. In the village, I saw what initially I thought was the French word for pangolin, "kipique", which turned out to be hedgehogs. Two little spiky balls the kids had caught. Dang, they were cute, but I had to run before they killed them and ate them because I couldn't bear to watch it.

I'm going to try to get some pictures up on facebook or here, but the internet is extremely slow. I'll keep you posted on that front.

Perhaps the title could be better...

I had my every hope and dream crushed today when I found out this horrible news: Mali has no pangolins. Now, this is terrible for a couple of reasons. First and most obvious, I do not get to spot their primordial silhouettes bumbling across the night brush. Second, Wikipedia is fallible. Nooo. I retain the blog name, though, in honor of my fallen dreams. Perhaps when traveling elsewhere in the region, I will be vindicated.

Aside from such things, life is good. Ramata continues to open up and I think it will be fun to work with her. I learned some practical things, like how to ask people's names, plus a bunch of verbal paradigms. Today, Jeff sat with us and we learned the names for about 14 different kinds of grasshoppers. I didn't even know that many kinds of grasshoppers existed, much less that there would be different names for them. People even eat some of them, but I hope I will not have to face that. But who knows? Maybe grasshopper is an undiscovered (at least in the US) delicacy.

Jeff and Minkailou took Abbie out to her village in Bunu yesterday, so it was just me and Seydou, another of Jeff's assistants, around the house. Got up at dawn, as usual, did elicitation for about four hours, had lunch, took a nap, sat in the AC room and crunched some data, had dinner, listened to Akon and Lil Wayne on my computer with Seydou, then Jeff came back and I went to bed. It was very windy on the roof last night, not sure if that's best for Bug Hut 2. I may have to descend.

Anyhow, it's off to the village for me tomorrow. Seydou will come with and spend a couple days to make sure everything gets settled okay, and Ramata is coming with me too. I'm definitely nervous--there's no AC room or refrigerator there, no electricity at all, for that matter. We'll see I hold up. My plan is to spend a week and then run back to Douentza to regroup for however long. I think that will be fine, since Jeff wants me to spend a fair amount of time in Douentza while he's still here.

Some things I like: a herd of sheep wandering into the house courtyard; mangoes; stars; cold bucket baths on a hot day; the slow pace of life.

Things that could be better: the heat, worrying about water/infectious diseases; being away from people I love; the lack of privacy.

Thank you for all of the comments! They are the highlight of my day.

A note on a million posts

Below, there are about 5 posts. They should appear in the order logical if I had posted them the day of. I just had a lot to say and needed to break it up. So start a few posts down and work your way up!