On Air in Mali

Fever Pitch

2010-07-16T16:31:00.002Z

The vaccination Tata received on Tuesday didn't account for her fever. Wednesday morning, I stopped by Soté's house on my way to the well. I found Soté dressing three-month old Tata and spraying her with perfume.

Tata is Soté's sixth daughter. It is fair to say that everyone had been praying that Tata be born a boy. Soté has yet to give birth to a son, and her husband, Lahmine, married his second wife, Bébé last year. When Soté gave birth to her fifth daughter, Banta told me Soté was close to tears. The pressure was on, and I'll admit to being worried about what Soté's reaction would be when she gave birth to Tata in late April.

Maybe its how pretty Tata is. Maybe its her straight(ish) nose. Maybe its that Bébé gave birth to her first child -- also a girl -- last month, so Soté feels vindicated: finally she's proved that its not just her that gives birth to girls. I don't make the baby, Soté keeps saying, Allah does. Whatever it is, Soté adores Tata as if she were her first daughter, not her sixth.

So when Tata wouldn't stop crying on Tuesday and Wednesday and her skin grew oh-so-hot, Soté was worried. It didn't help that Soté was on cooking duty. Later that morning, I stopped by the family compound to find Soté rushing around, trying to get lunch ready, Tata screaming in the background. Soté had laid Tata down on a mat inside the house (imagine pounding millet with a sick baby on your back), but Tata was now willing to cooperate. I picked Tata up and rocked her in the shade, trying to ignore how hot her skin was.

That evening, I walked back to Soté's, lighting my way with my headlamp. The last moon I'll see in Mali has risen, but its just a sliver yet. Tata was still crying, but there were louder cries in the compound now, too. Lahmine's goat was sick. A small black goat Lahmine bought a couple months ago to fatten up and resell, the goat was weaving around the compound, squealing with horribly. Lahmine sat with his flashlight, eyes on his goat.

Tata kept crying and Soté passed her to me. All day she spent cooking, but she needed to start another fire: it was her night with Lahmine and she wanted to serve him something special.

Lahmine got up and walked over to the goat, examining her. He reached into his pocket and then forced medicine down the goat's throat. She screamed louder. He hadn't found the time (or money) to take Tata to the doctor yet, but there was medicine for the goat.

But Lahmine seemed to relax a little after giving the goat the medicine. He reached over and touched Tata's forehead. She is hot, he said. We sat talking quietly, Soté busy poring water and setting the evening's tea on its charcoal fire.

the goat's cries were weaker now. They had lost some of their desperation. Lahmine got up when he realized the goat had wandered outside the compound. He came running back inside with her, yelling at his daughter to bring him a knife. The medicine had hurt instead of helped, and Lahmine was in a hurry to kill the goat before it died. If he didn't cut the goat's head in time, the meat would be inedible.

The knife wasn't sharp, but it is big. It makes a dull sawing noise, but finally the goat's head is off.

Lahmine left with the goat and Soté sighed. I knew it was too much medicine, she said. Tata had fallen asleep in my arms and Soté picked her up. Her fever was down a bit and she was sleeping soundly.

We waited for Lahmine in the darkness. Soté brought out his food and began pouring the tea. We waited.

Perfection

2010-07-05T11:19:00.000Z

For two years, I have tried to become the perfect Malian women. I wear Malian clothes and cover my shoulders and knees. I refuse help at the well and convince myself that I can carry just as many buckets of water home as the women dropping their well bags into the dark hole beside me. I take pride in the perfect pattern left in my compound after I sweep the leaves and trash from the dust every morning. I have learned to cook every Malian dish and ignore the smoke of the wood fire. I know to kneel to give someone water and I think nothing of rising to give my chair to a man. I've worked hard to become the perfect Malian women, but as I near the end of my time in Mali, I've realized this: I don't want to be the perfect Malian woman.

I don't want to have to give up my chair every time a man approaches out of duty. But its not just because I want the good chair as much as the man I give mine up to does. The physical work is exhausting. I don't carry a baby on my back while pulling water, I don't pound millet, I take vitamins every morning and am just 24 years old. Even so, I can feel the strain in my arms and back. But its not just the physical wear of being a Malian woman. I want to travel outside of my home without first having to obtain permission from my husband. I want to have a career. I don't want to worry about whether my husband will take another wife or whether I will give birth to a son.

When Aissa is happiest with me, she gives me the following blessing: May Allah give you a good husband, one who has money and does not bother you or beat you. I want to hope for more than that in my husband.

As I prepare to leave, I would like to say goodbye to my village comfortable in the knowledge that my friends and family here are living good, full lives, and that I can feel comfortable leaving to live my own good, full life. For the most part, I do believe those in my community are doing just fine. They are making money and love, working and playing, laughing and crying, eating and drinking. But what makes saying goodbye so hard is that I know that the life I will be returning to is full of opportunities many of my Malian friends would jump at, if only given the chance.

Its not just the opportunities I'll have, its the security my American family and life provide. Security is perhaps the biggest difference pushing its way between me and my Malian friends. Their lives are much more volatile than anything I have experienced, with little to fall back on. I had a reminder last week when I purchased four 100-kilo bags of rice to give to the four families who have kept me happy and fed over the past two years. Each bag cost about $70 and was loaded onto a small cart and sent to each family's house. How would you feel if someone gave you a 100-kilo bag of white rice? Adama couldn't believe the rice was for him and insisted that the boy who had brought the rice take it back and away to its true owner. Finally understanding it was meant for him, he spent the afternoon vrooming around on his moto, going too fast. Aissa couldn't stop looking at the huge sack, a smile breaking out on her face. And Banta -- she thanked Allah that she wouldn't have to worry where her next meal would come from this year.

It all comes back to this: I don't want to be the perfect Malian women. And if I don't want to be a Malian woman, then I know something is not right. Something is not fair. I will leave my village in a little less than a month sure that the lives my Malian friends and family are living are good, full lives. I will also leave knowing that they deserve much more.

Every evening, before it gets dark, I bike over to Aissa's and, after pulling her water, head out over the hill to the next village on a run. As I near the neighboring village, I run into three or four women. These women have spent the entire day, under the sun with no shade, bending over piling rock pebbles one after another into a pile that will be bought for construction work. Its back-breaking work, and everyday, it hurts my bones to see it. Yesterday, sweaty and tired after my run, I told Aissa about the pebble women and how it breaks my heart everyday to see them working so hard. She looked at me quizzically. They're making money, aren't they? she said.

I remember meeting a professor who travels yearly to Mali early on in my time here. He said he teaches an African studies class, and that every year, his students wonder if Africans are living simpler, happier, less complicated lives than Westerners. I was unsure how to respond to the professor when he asked for my opinion, but now the questions seems almost laughable. Lives are different here, but the stresses and joys people experience are the same. There is just as much gossip and stress, even if there is also more time to sit and drink tea. The Malian life in my village is not a simple one, as much as we might wish it was.

*Please remember that the sentiments in this blog are based on one experience in one village in Mali and do not represent the wealth and opportunities of many Malians (including women). After all, it always comes down to access to opportunity and wealth, doesn't it?

Portrait of a Patriot in Mali

2010-06-28T10:10:00.002Z

I haven't been able to watch any of the World Cup games in my village, soccer being an activity exclusively reserved for men. When the games are on, all the men congregate at the different televisions around town, and I sit with Sitan or Banta, wondering what the score might be and keeping an eye out for Adama's moto for news of the results.

But Saturday found me in San for the America v. Ghana game, and a couple other volunteers and I walked over to the neighborhood bar to watch the game. Bars are also male-dominated in Mali -- in fact, during our training, Peace Corps reminded the male volunteers over and over again that the only African women they would find in bars would be prostitutes (many of whom are Nigerian women who have been trafficked here). Every single one of them. San is a bigger town, however, and although I wouldn't like any of my colleagues or friends from my conservative Muslim village to see me in a bar, its fairly acceptable for us to frequent the bars in San.

As Esther and I walked to the bar, I couldn't figure out which team to support. My own country or the last African team still in the game? Either win would be a victory in my book, but I knew how depressed my Malian friends would be if Ghana lost. Everyone had set their hopes on the Ghanaian team.

We arrived at the bar to find a mix of Malian and Ghanaian men already settled in. At first, the banter was friendly. But after Ghana scored its first goal and the men had downed a couple of beers, the environment began to change, and my sentiments with it. As the men grew drunker and more obnoxious, suddenly, I knew which team I wanted to win: America. They shouted and swore at America. One man put his face in front of Brad's, blocking his view. Ghana is going to win! He shouted. Ghana is the best! Ghana is a rich country, he continued, much richer than here -- there is everything in Ghana, he said, refusing to move. I had walked into the bar prepared to support Ghana, but as the game came to a close, I was on the edge of my seat, desperate for America to score again.

It was an experience not singular to Saturday's game. While I have never thought of myself as being particularly patriotic, whenever I am confronted by critiques of America and the West which seem unfair to my ears, I am immediately ready to claim that America is the best country on earth. I go so far to the other side that my words astonish even me. And yet sometimes I feel that taking such a contradictory point of view is the only way I can impress upon my community that we toubabs are not who they think we are. I adore Mali, but I don't think I have ever loved America as much as I do while living so far from her.

Tell me Americans don't know how to work, and I will swear that no one works harder.
Tell me Americans hate black people, and I will insist that racism is close to extinction.
Tell me Americans never say hello to each other, and I will assure you that we greet every stranger who walks by.
Tell me Americans are all rich, and I will do my best to persuade you that we all sleep on the street and starve.

Okay, maybe I don't go to quite such extremes, but its close. When I get that patriotic urge, there are two impulses going on in my mind.

The first is a feeling of defensiveness. I am the only American to stand up for not only an entire country, but also all of the Western world. I am also being evaluated by people based on their identification of me as an American and Westerner. So if someone says all Americans are wealthy and can afford anything, that means I can too. If someone says all Americans hate black people, that means I do too.

The second is a frustration over the incredible stereotypes that exist of Americans and Westerners in general. I can imagine that Africans would feel similar frustrations faced by Americans who assume that there are zebras and elephants running through their villages every day, that every African is beyond poor, and that they all practice voodoo.

After the soccer game ended, Brad and I walked out to the jeers of the those celebrating Ghana's win in the bar. We jokingly said we would support whoever played against Ghana in the next round. The impulse to be so defensive and patriotic is a fascinating one to me. Its an impulse that I can't quite believe I've experienced the next day. And its easy to see how powerful that impulse could be if you let it take over.

Postscript: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2010-06-24T08:08:00.003Z

Yesterday, Dr. Mary Alleman from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and Dr. Tounkara, who works with the World Health Organization (WHO) here in Bamako, spoke to a small number of Peace Corps volunteers assembled at Tubani So, the Peace Corps training center not far from Bamako.

This Friday, health workers all over the country will head out door-to-door to begin yet another polio vaccination campaign. The CDC and WHO are working in cooperation with the Malian Ministry of Health in hopes to eradicate polio in Mali. Since 2008, Dr. Alleman reported, polio has begun to surge in West Africa. Starting in Northern Nigeria, it has now reached all the way up the West coast of Africa north to Mauritania, frustrating health workers internationally who had thought they were close to eradicating polio completely in Africa.

When polio cases began to pop up in Mali in 2008, health organizations took the cases seriously and the door-to-door campaigns began in a hope to contain and stop the spread of the virus.

But what about routine vaccinations? Why have they taken a back seat, while polio vaccinations have stormed ahead, irregardless of the cost and burden it places on local communities. Why were Malian health centers suddenly without access to the vaccinations vital to preventing outbreaks of other diseases, like measles, yellow fever, and tetanus?

Dr. Tounkara stood up to answer my questions. In 2009, he said, Mali's partner organizations and donors stopped buying Mali's vaccines in the expectation that Mali could now handle the financial burden of buying vaccines on its own. However, that same year, the cost of vaccines went up and Mali was unable to pay for enough vaccines to cover the entire country, leading to the lengthy shortages we experienced in my village.

This year, Dr. Tounkara said, Mali has been able to pay in full and the shortages should be over.

They haven't ended in my village, I said. The system is breaking down, and its terrifying to watch.

Dr. Tounkara took down the name of my village and promised me to look into the problem. I hope he finds some answers.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2010-06-12T17:18:00.002Z

During my first few months in my village, Mapha, the vaccinator and I would go out to neighboring villages three times a week -- he to vaccinate the babies and I to weigh them and give nutritional advice to their mothers.

The clinic in our village serves 25 other villages -- the closest of which is 3km away and the furthest over 15km. Under the Malian national health care system, villagers living less than 5km away from the clinic are required to walk to the clinic on fixed vaccination days -- Tuesdays at our clinic. On the other days of the week, the vaccinator should be going out to the more distant villages to give them their vaccinations.

And that is just what Mapha would do. He would start off early on his moto, a bag packed with his register and single-use needles, and a small cooler tied to the back of his moto filled with ice boxes and polio, measles, and yellow fever vaccines. When I went with him, he would ride a little slower on the sandy dirt roads so I could keep up with him on my bike.

During those early months, Mali was new to me and I was new to Mali. I could barely tell a mother her baby was at a healthy weight in Bambara and kept turning to Mapha, exasperated with my own limited Bambara and dependent on Mapha to help me give nutritional advice to the women.

We would arrive in a village and head for a central village meeting location, one with a bit of shade provided by stacked millet stalks or a big tree. Before we had managed to set up and hang the baby scale, the area would be full with fifty women and their screaming babies. At one small village, the town crier began his rounds of the village. In his loud voice, over and over, he announced that the white doctor had come, much to my horror and Mapha's amusement.

Mapha knew everyone and would alternate between screeching laughter -- his head thrown back -- reprimands and looks of disapproval that scared me with their severity when a mother had gotten behind in her child's vaccination schedule. The mothers all knew him too -- go easy today, Mapha, they would say. When the babies would start to cry after the shots, the mothers would point at Mapha. Mapha minen, they would say, Mapha's bad.

But then, perhaps 10 months ago, the vaccines disappeared. Mapha would go to San to get the vaccines to discover that there were none to be had, not only in San, but all of Segou, and maybe even, the rumor went, all of Mali. When the vaccines would come, it was never enough. They would be finished in one day, and the mothers would beg for us to just vaccinate one more child as Mapha tried to explain that the vaccines were simply gone -- boloci fura banna peuw.

After our Monday night radio shows Adama and I would have to announce that vaccinations would not be taking place the next day so that women wouldn't walk 10k to arrive at the clinic at 7am. I retired my radio show on the importance of vaccinations completely. Mapha no loner rode his moto out to the neighboring villages, staying behind to play cards outside the clinic. When we would receive vaccines, the crowd at the clinic would be so large we could not hear each other over the noise. There were fights and more than one black eye among the women over who had arrived first. The pushing and yelling got so bad that I began to dread the days when we did have vaccines.

No one can tell me exactly what the problem is or where the fault lies. At first we thought it was just a problem of getting the vaccines to Bamako and then the regional capitals and then to San and finally to us. But everyone I talk to says the vaccines are in hard to come by everywhere. Then there was the unconfirmed rumor that the Malian government had simply forgotten to order vaccines for 2010, thinking for some reason that the 2009 vaccines would last for two years. And finally there is the logistical problem that there are more people and more babies coming to the clinic for vaccines than the Malian government planned for based on birth certificates in our area.

Meanwhile, every couple of months, in Mali and much of West Africa, a huge door to door polio vaccination campaign takes place, funded by international donors. In every community in Mali, community health workers walk from compound to compound, administering an oral polio vaccine and marking the left-hand pinky finger of each child under five who receives the vaccine. There are t-shirts and paychecks for the community health workers go back and forth to each household, making complicated symbols with chalk on mud houses to signify whether all the children of the house have been vaccinated. There are unlimited boxes of the polio vaccine and white SUVs head into every village to monitor the progress of the campaign.

I am confident in saying that every child under five in my village has received the polio vaccine at least five times, but almost all babies are now behind in their vaccination schedule, if they have started it at all. Its a long walk to our village, and there are some villagers from the outer villages that Mapha has not seen for months. After working so hard and so long to convince villagers of the importance of vaccines, suddenly, Mali and the international community have dropped the ball. How can the polio campaign be so well organized and regular vaccines forgotten?

Those severe looks Mapha used to give? Now he just gives them to me, because we know the mothers are no longer at fault for being behind in their children's vaccinations.

The Daou Dynasty

2010-05-30T11:09:00.002Z

The Daou family are the big-wigs in town. They are both the village founders and the holders of power today. Adama Daou is the Chief of the village. Moussa Daou is the mayor and Siaka Daous was the mayor before him. Mapha Daou is the vaccinator and Oumou Daou is one of the birthing women. Mama Daou is the wealthiest man in the village. Adama Daou is the President of the managing body of the clinic and Ko Daou is the President of the radio. And if there is any new committee formed, any political position open, be sure a Daou will be appointed or voted in.

Although the village is now a mixture of Theras, Konates, Cissés and Traoriés, the Daous have no desire to relinquish their power. And the others know it and respect their wish, fearful of treading on the toes of the Daou family.

Perhaps part of their success in holding onto power comes from their ability to manage their own family like a high functioning bureaucracy.

My host family is a branch of the Daou family, made up of the Chief of the village, Adama Daou, his two sons and their families, and the Chief's younger brother (même père, même mère), Lahmine, and his family. There are over thirty members in their branch alonge, and they are based out of a large compound in the center of the village, its entryway opening to the road that runs through town. Adama's sons and Lahmine, my official host, each have their won compounds for each of their wives, but like any bureaucrat, they and their wives and children spend each day at the office -- the big family compound.

The roles of family members are well defined. The men handle farming, financial matters, the building and upkeep of family houses, and the raising of animals -- the cows, goats and chickens that fill the family compound and wander the village in search of food. The women do the cooking and raise the children . There is no such thing as 'gender bending', in this family, men and women stay where they belong. The rules stretch right down to who is in charge of fetching a glass of water (women) and who names the children (men).

There are ten women in my branch of the Daou family -- all various wives of the four men. The women take turns cooking for everyone, switching every two days. Millet porridge for breakfast, millet to for lunch and millet rice for dinner, a regimen that also rarely varies. While only one woman is on cooking duty at a time, stirring huge pots over a wood fire, all the women gather each morning to pound the millet together, laughing and gossiping as the tall, thick pestle flies up and down in their hands. While it is the women who cook, the men maintain control over the graineries, doling out millet little by little as the year goes along.

There are special dispensations too, rules set in place in case of death or births. Maternity leave for one -- after woman gives birth, she has forty days vacation from cooking duties, pounding millet, and any other work at the family compound. My host mother, Soté, recently gave birth to her sixth daughter, Tata, and is currently enjoying her last days on maternity leave. She takes her time getting dressed in the morning and heads over to the family compound not to pound millet but to show off her baby.

When Gaousou, one of Adama's brother's, died in February, there were bylaws already in place. After the funeral, Gaousou's wife Rokia moved into the family compound permanently along with her three children. She is still there today and will stay there until five months have passed since Gaossou's death. She is in mourning and although she helps out, she does not take on cooking duty or even step foot outside the compound. Once five months have passed, late this coming July, Rokia will be allowed to leave the compound. She will also be remarried to one of the men in the family, a way of ensuring her security and the future of her children. Its the Daou family form of life insurance, in a different form.

LIke any bureaucracy, there are always people milling about the compound and others coming in and out. Even today, two years in, I'm still trying to figure out who everyone is and how they fit into the Daou dynasty.

I am a Daou, too, and although I don't share cooking duties or help in the fields during farming season, I am certainly an element of soft power in the village for the Daous, a celebrity endorsing their brand. The Theras are the next most populous family in the village, and I know they would give a lot not only to become the mayor (they recently achieved great success by seeing a Thera appointed Imam of the main mosque), but also to see me -- or my Peace Corps successor -- named Thera. But as every Daou knows, the Theras are bean eaters, and I would never touch beans to save my life.

The Impact of AID

2010-05-08T17:13:00.002Z

It is hard to escape the impact of aid and development organizations in my village. UNICEF, USAID, World Vision, the European Union -- development organizations and NGOs are certainly trying to make a mark. Whether they have been successful is a debate to get into at another time. However, it provides an interesting perspective to detail exactly what exists in my village because of a development project. Whether its a person whose salary is paid by an NGO or consortium of aid programs and local community groups, vaccinations that are subsidized by foreign governments, or a new building, aid is everywhere.

Without aid, none of this would be in my village:

The clinic
Mosquito Nets
Vitamin A
Birth Control
Malaria prophylaxis for pregnant women
Vaccinations and sterile, onetime-use needles
HIV/AIDS testing and retrovirals
Nutritional supplements for malnourished children
The new hospitalization room at the clinic currently under construction
Enriched porridge powder and the profit it brings in for Mama Traoré
The bikes given to the community health workers
The ambulance that comes to our village from San
The solar panels and batteries that light the clinic at night
The mayor's office and the salaries paid to the mayor and his staff
The doctor
2 nurses
The public elementary and middle school
Student sponsorship/scholarships
The preschool
The radio
The library and the books that fill it
The local cereal bank
The generator that provides electricity along the main road at night
The covered market area
The businesses that support the NGO and aid workers traveling along the main road; the income generated by the purchases of community members such as the doctor and myself who receive their salaries from an aid organization
3 pumps
The local church
All technical and educational trainings, including trainings on health topics, business management, knitting and sewing, animal raising, and improved farming received by villagers
The Youth Center
A trench to collect rain water for farming
Money in villager's pockets from trainings, projects, and short-term jobs with development agencies
Me.

The list could go on and on. Take just one of these items and extrapolate from there. Vaccinations = a job for Mapha, the vaccinator = good food for Mapha's family and a concrete house with a tin roof = health and opportunity for Mapha's children = health for the thousands of children Mapha vaccinates = more hands in the fields and more mouths to fill = a larger population...and on it goes.

Most Malians I know are appreciative of the aid that is given to their community. Like many Americans who feel that it is their duty as those who have to help those who have not, many of the Malians I have come in contact with, express an expectation that toubabs should help out where they can.

The help is coming in. The community plays a large role in receiving much of the aid -- they provide the physical labor or a percentage of the money required to complete a project. USAID in collaboration with Peace Corps built the radio, for example, with a large monetary contribution from the village, manpower to build it, and it is now staffed by Malians who receive no salary.

Aid is interwoven into so many aspects of the village that it is hard to imagine what the village would be like without aid, or what effects aid will have on the village in the long run.

Mixed Signals in Development

2010-04-08T13:55:00.000Z

When Alimata would arrive on Saturdays to be weighed, I could barely stand to look at her. She was, literally, skin and bones. Her skin was taught across her cheekbones, pulling her mouth tight and her eyes were listless. It made me cringe to pick her up to weigh her and measure her arm, to feel the unnatural lightness of the two year old and the closeness of her bones to my hands.

Alimata was one of many cases of severe malnutrition I and my Malian colleagues at the local health clinic had started to treat weekly as part of the malnutrition program we established. But Alimata's case was by far the worse, and at her weekly weighings I watched with despair as her weight dropped ever lower. After several weeks treating Alimata with Plumpy Nut, a peanut butter based and vitamin enhanced food that is supplied free to malnourished patients by UNICEF, we had seen no positive change in Alimata. The head of the clinic, Doumbia, decided it was time to refer Alimata to the nearest hospital about 50K away.

I had thought that the referral would be the obvious solution -- at the hospital, Alimata would receive better treatment and would soon get healthy. But her mother's reaction proved me wrong. Kadia already walked 7K to the clinic every Saturday with Alimata strapped to her back, and she balked at the idea of going all the way to the hospital, where she would not only have to pay for transport but would also have to pay for food and lodging for herself. The real difficulty, however, lay in her husband's approval. He refused to let her go -- who would cook, clean and pull water for his bath without Kadia around? Kadia simply could not take her daughter to the hospital -- it wasn't an option.

"Fine," said Doumbia, "We have done all we can for you. If you refuse our referral, we will be forced to drop you from the program."

For me, it was a terrifying moment. Doumbia clearly felt like he had done all he could and the case was now out of his hands. But Kadia stood before me close to tears, helpless, with a two year old in her arms who would surely die if she walked out the door. There had to be a better solution.

And there was. Doumbia and I came to an agreement, and the next day Alimata walked all the way back to the clinic, this time with Kadia on her back and bowls of millet, peanuts and beans on her head. That morning, we taught Kadia how to make ameliorated (enriched) porridge with local ingredients, and everyone laughed with relief and giddy excitement when Alimata began to drink the porridge as if she would never stop. Kadia continued to make the porridge throughout the week, and on Saturday, for the first time, Alimata's weight had gone up instead of down.

Our success with Alimata and the ameliorated porridge put an idea in our heads. We enlisted our community health workers to begin ameliorated porridge demonstrations, at which mothers would learn how to provide better nutrition for their children and the porridge would be sold and provide a small profit for the community health workers.

The demonstrations took off and the porridge was a hit. Due to the large size of Malian households and the hierarchy over who controls the money, it was simply easier and more practical for women to buy ready-made porridge for their children then to make it themselves. Women wondered why we were not selling the porridge daily. Others, from far off villages, asked if the porridge was available in powder form so that they could take it home, boil water, and have an easy way of providing nutritious food for their children all week long.

With the help of Mama Traoré, one of the community health workers, we dried peanuts and millet and beans, ground them, and packaged them into ameliorated porridge powder to be sold at the clinic. Each bag sells for 100 Franc CFA, or about 20 cents, and makes more than enough porridge to keep an infant full all day long. On her way to the clinic, a huge bowl atop her head filled with bags of porridge powder, women and men call out to Mama, asking for one, two, three bags of powder. On vaccination days, mothers carefully pull out 100 Franc CFA pieces from knots in their clothes to buy porridge. and on Saturdays, Kadia walks all the way to our village, Alimata strapped to her back, in search of porridge powder. These days, I don't cringe when I see Alimata, although she cringes when she sees me. No doubt she remembers those days with little pleasure.

The porridge powder had been selling for several months when a shipment arrived from UNICEF two weeks ago: 15 huge sacks of corn-based porridge powder that will expire by the end of July. That gives us four short months to use porridge powder for which we have no need. Not only do we have no need for it, but it provided the perfect example of aid misplacing the local economy.

The powder we sell is affordable, and Mama makes a good profit from it. The powder from UNICEF is made mostly of corn, with a small amount of soy beans and sugar added. It is likely that the corn is produced in Western countries, and the purchase of the corn in addition to the transportation costs to send it across the ocean to Dakar and across land to Bamaka and finally up to our village must be phenomenal.

To make matters worse, the powder had clearly been sitting for a long time, and when Aissa and I took some home to test it out, she handed me the sifter to sift the porridge before we added it to water. I recoiled when I saw what was inside: bugs and worms, worms, worms galore. We sifted out what we could, but the little worms were white and tricky and small: hard to get out. They'll cook, Aissa said. I squirmed and refused to try the porridge.

The inefficiency and waste bothers me, but what really gets to me is that we didn't need the powder from UNICEF. Malnutrition here is based not on a lack of food but a lack of the right kinds of food and the knowledge of what makes up a nutritious diet. The village had found its own solution to malnutrition, and that solution was putting money in Mama Traoré's pocket and the line of producers who farmed the millet, peanuts and beans. Plus, mothers were now getting a better idea of how to provide healthy nutrition for their children, whereas the UNICEF porridge was too foreign to be easily understood as anything other than toubab porridge.

We are doling out the UNICEF powder anyway, advising malnourished recipients to sift, sift, and sift again, and Mama's powder is still selling. We hope we will be able to finish the 15 sacks of powder before the end of July -- otherwise they will be sent to the goats -- just like the shipment we received from UNICEF last year.

Presenting: Banta Traoré

2010-03-09T17:06:00.003Z

Banta only wears one pair of earrings these days, but her ears are littered with a trail of holes from the bottom to the top of her earlobes. Oh, she'll say to me, you should have seen me when I was young! She was her mother's only child, and her mother doted on her. Not only were her ears filled with gold, but she had extensions in her hair and the prettiest outfits. There was just one problem: Banta's father died while she was only a child, and her mother remarried, to the chief of the village.

Banta's new stepfather, Coby Daou, wasn't the father figure Banta may have hoped for. At twelve or thirteen or fourteen -- most Malians have not kept track of their birth and age -- it was time to be married, and Coby picked Daraman Daou to be Banta's husband. Banta didn't like Daraman and resisted the marriage. When I press Banta to tell me what she didn't like about her future husband, she grows exasperated. Some people you like, she says, and some you just don't. I think Banta had bigger aspirations for herself, higher and farther than Daraman Daou. With all that gold in her ears, how could she not?

The chief of the village, however, cared little about the way Banta carried herself and the pretty clothes she wore. Without her biological father to stand up for her and refuse the marriage, Banta was powerless: she married Daraman and became pregnant with her daughter, Cissé. Banta never recovered from the birth -- it tore up her uterus and she had constant stomach pains. She tried traditional healers and was sent here and there by the state health care system to no avail: she would never give birth again.

While Banta cared for her child and searched for a cure, her husband disappeared. One day, Daraman, disappeared, and no one could say where he had gone. She was left alone, sick, with her baby, but rather than seeing it as a burden, it was just the opening Banta had been looking for.

As soon as Cissé was weaned, Banta packed her bags and left, too, leaving Cissé with her family in the village. She traveled through Mali and across Burkina Faso, here and there until she made it to Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. A half-brother lived there and Banta made herself at home. She walked the streets selling produce and earning enough to buy soda for ten cents and sixteen big yellow bananas all for only twenty cents. She got fat and dressed up to walk down to the beach. Afraid of the genies and devils lurking in those blue waters, she never knew what the Atlantic Ocean felt like on her skin.

Through the Malian community in Abidjan, Banta learned that Daraman was living there too. No one believed that Banta could be Daraman's wife -- beautiful Banta, with that swing in her step and a mouth that never stopped.

After 7 months, Banta went home without Daraman. When she arrived in the village, she knew that she must remarry before Daraman came home and humiliated her by taking a second wife. There was a soldier posted to the village, living just at the edge of it, and he began to ask about Banta. With the soldier, it was different. With the soldier, Banta felt what she hadn't with Daraman.

Banta told her stepfather that she wished to remarry. He laughed in her face and said she would stay with Daraman. No, Banta said, she would remarry and she would be the soldier's wife.

You have no father, the chief of the village told her, no one will give you away if not for me. You have no father.

Allah will be my father, Banta said, Allah is enough.

She went to the soldier and they travelled to Banta's mother's natal village, where her uncle gave her away.

The following years were good ones. Banta and the soldier moved from village to village, post to post. She describes that time as an easy, luxurious time in her life. She ate meat every day. Sugar and tea were plentiful. She had a servant to pull her water and pound the millet. After lunch, she drank tea and played games with the soldier and their friends.

It didn't last. The soldier was sent to Kidal, far into the North of Mali, all the way in the desert where the disenfranchised Tomashek live. Before Banta could join him there, the soldier was killed. With few other options and her thoughts on her ailing mother, Banta returned to live under her mother's roof. Nine months later, her mother, too, passed away.

After the death, it was assumed by the villagers that Banta would go back to Daraman. Banta was convinced of it too, and I can't get a straight answer from her when I ask why, why now, she would submit to Daraman? Maybe she was tired. She wanted to be home in the village and she was getting older. Her daughter was there, now married and raising her own children, and Banta wanted to be there.

Daraman had long since returned from Abidjan and taken a second wife, Denba. But he accepted Banta back, and she moved into the house she lives in today. Daraman began sleeping at Banta's house -- two nights with her, two nights with Denba -- and Banta and Denba switched off on cooking duties.

No doubt Denba did not appreciate Banta's sudden reappearance after so long on her own with Daraman. Perhaps she resented Banta and the money and time that Daraman would have given to her instead if Banta had not come back.

One night, as Banta and Daraman lay asleep under the hangar outside of Banta's door, there was a noise. Slowly, Banta emerged from sleep and realized that Denba was inside Banta's house, sprinkling a liquid medicine around the house. A drop here, a sprinkle there. The whole inner room was covered before Banta realized what was going on and cried out. She lunged at Denba and grabbed her tafe, leaving Denba to cower uncovered in the corner.

Banta ran to the chief of the village. She rant o her uncle. She rant to Denba's family screaming of what Denba had done to her. She ran back to her house and was restrained from beating Denba.

While the village condemned Denba's actions, the medicine had its effect. Within a week, Daraman was sleeping every night at Denba's agian. This time, Banta did not resist. She never asked for Daraman again and he never asked for her. She stayed in the village, making and selling her cookies, laughing and talking just as much as before.

This is Banta's story. She told it to me in bits and pieces, interspersed as we drank tea, watered her papaya trees and ate rice. One day, as she sifted the flour for her cookies, she began to tell me the part about her stepfather and his lack of support for her. As she spoke, the flour spilled all over the ground and dirt. Eh Allah, Banta said. I shouldn't talk about heartbreaking things while I'm working.

Her life is shaped by a search for security, as all our lives are. When her stomach was full, when she grew fat, those were the good days. When explaining herself, she talks of her marriages. Unlike many of the women I know, her life has been a whirlwind of different places and people, wealth and poverty. She takes the punches, and while she talks often of the good days, she is happy where she is now too.

These days, Banta sleeps with her sugar box next to the bed. She is a storyteller, an entertainer above all else. The years passed have given her plenty of material. And the years ahead? I just wonder what stories she will tell of me.

In Arm's Reach

2010-02-27T16:25:00.001Z

It is well over 100 degrees outside and hotter on the bus. Malians generally dislike wind and the doors and windows of the crowded bus are kept closed tight. I feel the sweat roll down my legs and look ahead. Jennifer and I are perched atop 20 liter jugs in the aisles. The back seats are crowded with Nigerians, their distinctive style easily separating them from the Malians. The woman have huge Rihanna-style bouffants and the men have pierced ears. When we stop at the checkpoint outside of Sevare, we are stuck for an hour as the gendarmes try to communicate with the Nigerians, who do not speak Bambara or French. The Nigerian women's faces, crowded with facial scarring, turn to one another and laugh at their inability to understand and the staring eyes of the crowd, feeling out of the place, I suppose, much like we do as toubabs.

In Sevare, the Nigerians get out and Joe and Ashley get on. We take the Nigerians seats in the back. While night has fallen, the busy churning of the motor beneath us keeps the sweat pouring down my legs. A Songhrai boy wears mittens for some inexplicable reason and stares back at us. In Douentza, a man sits down in front of Ashley and takes anxious sips from his non-Alcoholic Malt beer. He takes off his sunglasses, polishes them thoroughly, puts them on, polishes them again, puts them on, and finally moves them to perch atop his head. Every time the back doors open, he cleans his glasses again. The road between Douentza and Hombori, our destination is dusty as we move closer and closer to the Sahara. The bus soon fills with dust and when the lights turn on when we hit potholes, we can see the dust lying everywhere around us. The man in front of Ashley becomes even more anxious with the dust and repeatedly stands up to wildly shake out his clothes. He checks the floor of the bus -- littered with egg shells and plastic bags, orange and banana peals -- and sweeps away the trash surrounding him. He continually rises to check that his baggage is as he left it, sitting back down and frantically running his hands over his prayer beads. Ashley and I, after first supposing the man was perhaps drunk, realize he must have some form of OCD. In a country where you often have to travel to your regional capital to find a doctor, much less a psychiatrist, I cannot begin to imagine the struggles this man must face.

We reach Hombori well past midnight and it is not until morning, waking up to a hot sun, that we see the desolate landscape we have found ourselves in. The land surrounding the town is dry, filled with sparse brush grass and broken by huge rock formations. We can see sand dunes from the roof and there is a shop down the road renting snowboards to tourists to ride down the dunes. but we are here to climb Hombori Tondo, the highest point in Mali.

We pack as much water as we can carry into our bags and head out with little else. There is no water on the trail, the sun is hot, and we won't be back until tomorrow. We climb for three hours until we reach the back of Hombori Tondo, a huge rock formation with a flat top that overlooks Hombori. We are already tired when we reach the cable, where we will clip in and climb to the top. Jennifer goes first, clipping into the cable and using the rocks to leverage her body up the steep rock face. I am at the back, following Ashley, and the ascent is immediately terrifying and hard. Even though we are secured by our harnesses, I'm sure I'll fall and when I look down the descent is steep and the chance of help minimal. But Jennifer keeps moving, Joe clips into the next bolt and instructs Ashley on where to put her feet and all I can do is follow.

It is nightfall before we reach the top and we climb the last bit with our headlamps on and the bright moon shining over us. Exhausted, we roll out our mats and pull out food. I try not to think about the descent. We begin to talk about the life goals we will have crossed off after leaving Peace Corps. Crossing African borders by land, Joe says, and learning an African language. We laugh and Jennifer says it sounds like Joe is writing his goals to fit what life has offered him.

I start to think not so much about my own goals, but about what I've done here that I certainly wouldn't have had the guts to do on my own, without these friends by my side. Without these friends teaching me new words, there would be severe shortages in my Bambara vocabulary. My understanding of Malian culture would be limited only to what I saw and how I interpreted it. I wouldn't have climbed Hombori Tondo. I wouldn't have pushed so hard or asked for so much. Without these friends, I am not sure I would have had it in me to stay here or be so happy doing it.

Joe lights a fire to keep away the bugs and I spread my shirt in front of it to try to dry the sweat. The wind blows up in the night and I haven't been this cold since I left America. I sit up on my mat and put on my glasses. The moon has fallen and the stars are bright and oh-so-close, O'Ryan's Belt within arm's reach.

When I joined the Peace Corps, I did not think of the other volunteers I would meet. I didn't know how much I would depend on them to listen to my stories, pull me out of the dark days and make me laugh at it all. Without them, it would be too much to digest on my own. Combined, we can piece our experiences together to try to understand where we are and how we fit in.

In just months now, we will separate as we choose new adventures beyond Mali. But I have a feeling: coming home will not be easy either. Just as I clipped into the cable to keep me from falling, I will hold onto those Peace Corps friends. Here, they have kept me from losing my identity as Cassie. At home, they will be the few who know me as Samouhan.

*I continue to neglect my camera, but check out photos on Joe and Ashley's blog: http://wollersheimtime.blogspot.com/

Near and Far

2010-02-10T17:46:00.003Z

Do you know what it means to have your parents travel across the world, through countless airports and across borders, to see where you have built another life?

Do you know what it means to introduce your mother and your father to those have become your family, yet know you only as Samouhan?

It means a collision of two worlds: of Mali and America; Samouhan and Cassie; a life that I was born into and another that I've created.

I had been telling everyone that my parents would be coming to visit me since I moved to the village. In 2010, I said. In cold season, I said. In three months, two months, one month, I said. In 4 weeks, two weeks, three days. Before I left to pick them up, I came out of my house and looked at Banta. I tried to explain how I felt: nervous, excited, anxious. "I kono guana," she said: your stomach is heating up.

She was right, my stomach was heating up. Not only was the trip important to me in that my parents would be able to see and better understand what I had been doing, but in that the people who I have become close to here in Mali would meet my real family and catch a glimpse of who I was, and am, besides a single girl past marrying age who speaks halting Bambara.

When we step off the bus -- Mom, Dad, Marika and I -- I can feel everyone's eyes on us. As we walk by the women selling dry oranges and peanuts, past the spot where the chief of the village sits, and through the market, I try to see this place as it must look to Mom and Dad and fail. The goats and chickens are normal, the mud mosque just a sign that I'm close to home, and each door and compound wall is the home of a friend or neighbor.

There is something different though, and even I notice it: it's a buzz in the air, a hum that builds and catches. Samouhan's parents have arrived, and the news spreads fast. Banta comes running out, shaking Mom's hand, Dad's hand, Marika's, babbling so fast in Bambara that I tell her, "Remember, Banta! I told you not to be crazy! Greet them slowly." So she starts all over again, testing the Bambara my mother worked so studiously at for months before her arrival.

Neighbors begin to flow in, anxious to see my family who have come from so far just to see me. It takes us hours to leave the compound in the mornings, as a long stream of men and women, old and young, come to say hello. They ask about everyone in America. They ask about Johnny and Becky who have come before them. "Eh, Allah," they say and shower blessings upon us. They bring chickens and guinea fowl, meat and fruit and bread. There is so much food and more meat than I've seen since Tabaski. By the end of their stay, my family is tired of chicken, but I'm not: I know I'll never eat this well again while I'm still in Mali.

Dad has been named for the chief of the village's father, Coby Daou, and everywhere we go, people cry out to him: "Coby! Bi Daou!" By Malian standards -- with grown children and grey hair -- Dad is an elder and much respected man. He is, by far, the most important member of our group and everyone wants to shake his hand. There are offers to give him new wives and a parcel of lamp to build his own mud house. They call him the chief of the village. "Nba," Dad says. It's the only Bambara he knows (literally, "My mother" -- women say "Nse," which means "My power") but it is good enough.

It takes us hours to get anywhere, even in a small village. Every single person calls us over to say hello. One woman I don't know presents Mom with a jar of honey. Mom's name is Korobora, one of the original Coby Daou's wives. She is long dead, but her children are all eager to meet the American reincarnation of their mother and the general opinion among the community is that Mom looks just like her togoma, or namesake. A straight nose is a mark of beauty here and Korobora was well known for her nose, which she would often jokingly put on sale for about $10. Mom quickly gets in the spirit of it and tips her head in the air, pinches her nose, and cries out "Wa kelen kelen!" (Ten dollars!).

One morning, the chief of the village and all his counselors come to greet Coby and Korobora. The chief of the village has never visited my compound before and Banta squeezes chairs under the hangar that provides shade. I perch on the end of one of the long, wooden lounge chairs that Banta and I spend our days gossiping in and think of how the chief of the village would never have come here if not for the visit of my mother and father. It's almost Christmas and we have decorated the compound with Christmas decorations sent from home -- ornaments from Aunt Julie and fake snow from Cindy Nordlof. As the chief and his counselors give blessings and make short speeches, the snow slips from the top of the hangar and begins to gently fall over the chief.

As we go around town, people repeat over and over that I have become a true member of the community. It seems an odd time for them to say it, at the moment when my family have come, marking me as the child of a different world. But it's true -- I have never felt so a part of things and so honored. I will never be Malian but right now it is enough to just be the toubab who belongs in this village.

The chief of the village's mother -- Lahmine and Baamu and Adama's mother -- passes away towards the end of our visit after many years of sickness. We attend the funeral, my mother, Marika and I surrounded by women with heads covered and my father sitting among the men. Here, in this most intimate of moments, we have found a common turf. Despite the differences between these two worlds which are at times impressive and vast, exciting and intimidating, there is unity in this: the death of a mother.

Time passed all too fast as it is wont to do, and before I knew it, the trip that I had been looking forward to for so long was over and I returned to my village alone. Alone, but now with a bit more color with which the community could paint in the picture of Samouhan -- a little bit more of Cassie mixed in.

My friends and neighbors ask about Coby and Korobora and whether they have made it home safe to America. Doumbia laughs over the pictures he took with his cell phone of Coby eating rice and sauce with his hand. Sitan retells the story of taking her daughter for vaccinations with Korobora in tow. The children sing the song we sang on the radio, Banta puts her nose in the air and says "Wa kelen kelen!" and everyone laughs over Coby and his "Nba"s.

When boys refuse to believe that I won't marry them, I simply say, "Do you think Coby Daou would agree?" and everyone breaks into laughter because they know my father would never give away his only daughter for two measly goats. When others ask why I can't stay in Mali forever, I tell them Korobora wouldn't be too pleased and they nod and cluck their tongues because they have seen the way my mother looks at me.

Do you know what it meant to introduce my mother to Aissata? Do you know what it meant to watch my father pull water and my mother pound onions? Do you know what it meant to watch my parents watch me?

It means not just a collision of two worlds but a union. To be truly happy here, to truly feel a member of the community, is to feel like the barriers between my two worlds are breaking down. My family's visit was another fracture in that wall, another brick torn down.

Thank you to Dad, who survived without beer or a fan and made the perfect poster boy for my Bring Back the Boubou Campaign.

Thank you to Mom, who amazed everyone with her Bambara and me with her eagerness to understand it all.

And thanks to Marika, who came twice, made me the best dressed woman in village, and lives up to the definition of a true balaman muso.

SIDA BE

2010-02-05T22:09:00.002Z

Check out the music video of Marika and I performing our hit single "Sida BE" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3J2IslRelI

The song is about HIV/AIDS and became an instant in the village! The kids are still singing! Thanks to Mom for the excellent camera work! And our apologies for sideways viewing.

The lyrics (sung to Akon's Right Now Right Now) are below in Bambara and English.

Sida bana bana bana
A kajugu det
Sida bana bana bana
An ka kan ka sida ban

Sida be yoro bee
An k'a ban yan
Mogo ka na siran
An ka sida ban

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

Sida bana bana bana
A kajugu det
Sida fura be soro
A be di mogo fou

A be i lafiya lafiya lafiya
I ka taa fura miné
Ka na siran
Fura be d'i ma fou

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

Sida be
Ka na siran
I ka taa depistage ke
Ka na siran
Ce ka capoti don
Ka na siran
I ka i mogo bee fo
Ka na siran

Sida be
Ka na siran
I ka taa depistage ke
Ka na siran
Ce ka capoti don
Ka na siran
I ka i mogo bee fo
Ka na siran

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

Est-ce que aw y'a faamu?
Est-ce que aw y'a faamu?
Sida ye cinen ye
Sida ye cinen ye
An bena sida ban
An bena sida ban
Wuli ka sida ban
Wuli ka sida ban

Est-ce que aw y'a faamu?
Est-ce que aw y'a faamu?
Sida ye cinen ye
Sida ye cinen ye
An bena sida ban
An bena sida ban
Wuli ka sida ban
Wuli ka sida ban

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An b'a fe ka taa joli sege sege sege sege
An te maloya sida kan
An bee ka farra nogon kan

AIDS sickness sickness sickness
It's really bad
Aids sickness sickness sickness
We must stop AIDS

AIDS is everywhere
We must stop it here
People cannot be scared
We must stop AIDS

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

AIDS sickness sickness sickness sickness
It's really bad
AIDS medicine is available
It's given free

The medicine lets you take it easy easy easy
Go to get the medicine
Don't be scared
It is given free

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

AIDS exists
Don't be scared
Go get tested
Don't get scared
Men should wear condoms
Don't be scared
Tell everyone
Don't be scared

AIDS exists
Don't be scared
Go get tested
Don't get scared
Men should wear condoms
Don't be scared
Tell everyone
Don't be scared

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

Do you understand?
Do you understand?
AIDS is true
AIDS is true
We will stop AIDS
We will stop AIDS
Stand up and stop AIDS
Stand up and stop AIDS

Do you understand?
Do you understand?
AIDS is true
AIDS is true
We will stop AIDS
We will stop AIDS
Stand up and stop AIDS
Stand up and stop AIDS

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We want to go get our blood tested tested tested tested
We are not ashamed of AIDS
We will all come together

All For One and One For All

2010-02-05T21:46:00.000Z

A noise woke me. Ever since Banta and I were scared by an intruder in the middle of the night a couple months ago, I haven't slept soundly. I clutched my flashlight and put on my glasses, somehow sure that wearing glasses in the pitch darkness would make it easier for me to hear.

Banta has been gone for a week and despite our higher compound walls and a lockable compound door that has caused friends and neighbors to ask if we've become Wahabiyaw -- members of a conservative sect of Islam that encourages women to stay within the compound walls -- I'm scared. I listen harder, convinced now that someone has managed to climb over the wall. As I lie there, imagining a thousand possibilities, there is another sound, this time coming from outside my compound. It is the sound of women gathering under the twisted Baobob tree and soon there is the solid thumping of women pounding millet. It is 2AM. The pounding reverberates through the ground and I feel it rise up through my pillow. It is 2AM and I know that something is not right. Women's work is a heavy burden, but there is no need for the women of my neighborhood to be pounding millet in the middle of the night. But even though I know something must be wrong, the pounding calms me: the familiarity of it and the security of the women just beyond my wall. I fall asleep, lulled by the thick wooden mortars crushing the millet into powder.

Morning is empty of all the usual sounds: laughter at the well; children's cries; mortar striking pestle. Instead, it is replaced by the signs of death. The sounds of steps never stop as friends and family come to greet the deceased's family. Aside from the hum of motos that stop to pay their condolences, the air carries a weight silence. I turn the BBC down low.

The deceased is Mamy Daou, a middle aged man who had fallen ill several months ago. He had gone to Bamako for treatment and passed away there. His body was put in a car and while the women pounded millet in the middle of the night, Mamy's body travelled up the road towards the village. What I'm embarrassed to admit is that I can't quite place Mamy. If Banta were here, I would question her until I was sure of who he was. But she's not, and I can't admit to anyone else that after a year here I'm still confusing the names of my neighbors. So I don't press Cissé when she tells me who died, because, partly, it is easier this way.

Death here is a constant. And the rituals surrounding death become a comforting pattern. There is a set period of public mourning (7 days). A script for those giving their condolences (Ala ka hiné, Ala ka djafama). A rigid structure of burial and greeting.

But that does not mean that death itself becomes easier. Before coming here, I had attended two funerals. Since arriving, there have been too many to count. It is tempting to begin to think, due to the frequency of death and ritualized mourning, that death is accepted more easily here and passings more fluid.

Look to Hawa for an answer, whom I found sobbing on the side of the road, holding the body of her lifeless baby in her arms. Look to the old women who repeat "She was old. He was tired" to convince us all that it was time. Look to Banta who took sick to her bad when a young man died after being injured in the fields. Look to the men and women who take out loans and do everything in their power to treat their children, their mothers and fathers when they fall ill.

The funeral took place after the midday prayer. The men meet at the chief of the village's compound and walk to Mamy's concession in a long, silent group. Mamou and I step into a shadow and wait for them to pass. We trail after them, saying hello to the other women who follow in the men's wake. The Harmattan wind has been blowing down hard from the Sahara, and it whips our complets out in front of us. The sky is hazy with dust and sand. We wrap our scarves tighter around us and listen to the sobs of a woman who has covered her face with her scarf to hide her wet eyes.

As we approach Mamy's compound, the procession of men turn back to face us, this time carrying Mamy's body on a wooden board, a red blanket covering him. There are so many people -- from our village and all the surrounding villages and it takes a while for all the men to troop out into the fields with the body.

We women stay behind. Plastic woven mats are spread under the shady parts of the large compound and we sit in silence. It is broken now and then by sobs, and the older women hush those who are crying. We are all so close together, I think, how easy it would be for us all to break into tears and never stop. And yet -- all I can think about is the colors of our complets against the dry sand and mud buildings, the wind catching our headscarves. The blue of my fabric and the deep maroon of Mamou's.

We wait. The woman next to me is worried that my legs are cramping with all of us clumped together. She massages my foot. Mamou drifts off, listing against my shoulder.

Finally, they come back, the men, as quietly as they left. The Imam breaks the silence and speaks. A rumbling builds. I look up at the sky, searching the blue for the plane that must be overhead, flying to Gao. But it is not there, and I realize the rumbling comes from the men's voices, raspy and deep, as they grasp each other's hands and mutter blessings.

Now it is our turn and I see Aissa file past us as the women seek out hands and give blessings. A hum of Amina (Amen) rises up from the mat and I too get up to take my place in the line of blessings.

Tonight, I will check the locks twice before ducking under my mosquito net. In the morning, there will be no sound of millet pounding -- the women of Mamy's family will rely on the food villagers bring by until the mourning period is over. When I'm ready, I will greet Mamy's family and repeat the same blessings. I will return everyday to give my blessings for a week. But there will be no more crying. When I go to greet tomorrow, I can count on laughter and jokes about me eating beans.

There is a time and a place for everything, and the Malians in my village do not set much time aside for tears and heartbreak. Whether it exists is not the question -- families are close, loved ones are precious. But when you, as a community, are this together, this intimate, this close in proximity and lifestyle and heart, to break down is not an option. The ritualized customs exist for a reason: All for one and one for all. That is why the women with dry eyes demand that the others wipe their tears away.

Peace is a Full Belly

2009-12-16T16:52:00.001Z

In my ongoing efforts to become a true Malian woman, I have been taking cooking classes.

Every Monday, I walk over to Adama's compound after I've finished with my laundry. I find Sitan starting the fire, a fan in her hand and Mamy, her four-month-old baby on her back. Sitan is a good cook, eager to try new recipes and create elaborate dishes. While most of the women in my village cycle through a never-ending routine of cooking the same dishes day after day (breakfast: millet porridge; lunch: to; dinner: millet rice), Sitan has both the interest and the means to prepare something a little different.

Adama allows Sitan full range in deciding what she'll cook. He includes her in his finances and while other women make meager sauces without nutrients or proteins due to husbands who refuse to hand over any cash, Adama's money -- for the most part -- is Sitan's money. Her mother taught her many of the elaborate dishes she whips up without consulting a recipe, but on Sundays, at 11am, Sitan tunes in to Mali's national radio station. Each Sunday morning, there's a cooking show, and Sitan has been known to try out the recipes she hears broadcast on the radio.

Sitan cuts the meat and I grind peppers and garlic. We make jaba ji (onion sauce), saga saga (sweat potato leaf sauce), basi (couscous-like millet), malo foyo (couscous-like rice), and faqoi (green-leaf sauce from the North).

When we started our lessons, Fatou, Sitan's three year-old daughter and I had about the same level of responsibility. But these days, not only am I wearing more complets, but I'm cooking a bit more like a Malian woman too. Mamy gets hungry and Sitan sits down to feed her, and it's just me, adding salt to the sauce and checking the rice.

When we're done, Sitan partitions the meal into three bowls: a medium-size bowl for Adama, a large bowl that Sitan will share with the four children in the compound, and a medium bowl for me to take home to share with Banta.

Banta looks forward to my cooking lessons: the food we cook is a treat -- a sauce she hasn't tasted since the days when she lived with the rich Army man -- or a dish she has never even heard of. Banta never tires of talking of food. When I accuse her of never thinking of anything else, she says, Well, when you have food and your belly's full, are you not at peace? Ah Banta, how wise you are.

Peanut butter sauce, or tigadegana, is a classic and one of my favorites. Here's the recipe if you'd like to try it out!

TIGADEGENA

INGREDIENTS:
Meat (goat or sheep's meat, preferably)
Oil
Peanut Butter (1.5 Cups)
4 Tomatoes
2 TBSP Tomato Paste
Ground Pepper (several tsps)
4 large hot red chili peppers
6 onions
Cabbage, carrots, or other veggies if you have them
Salt (1 TBSP)
2 Maggi Cubes (similar to bouillon cubes)
3 Cloves Garlic
Okra Powder (1/8 cup)
White Rice (as desired)

1. Steam or boil rice as desired.
2. On medium heat, add oil to a large saucepan. Slice meat as desired and add to pot.
3. Once meat has browned a bit, add 1/2 Liter water and peanut butter to pot.
4. Once meat is well cooked, squeeze juice out of tomato skins and add juice and tomato paste to pot.
5. Add 3 of the 4 peppers to the pot.
6. Once oil has started to separate from the peanut butter, add 3/4 Liter water and stir.
7. Grind (or finely chop) 6 large onions and add to the sauce.
8. If you have extra veggies -- like cabbage or carrots -- you can add them to your sauce.
9. Stir in salt and Maggi cubes.
10. Pound/grind garlic and pepper together and stir into the sauce.
11. Once oil begins to emerge from the sauce again, you can add okra powder to thicken the sauce (it makes it a bit slimy).
12. Once sauce is well cooked, remove from heat and serve over a bed of rice. If you're eating Malian style, you'll serve the dish in a big bowl or platter. Now, wash your hands -- with soap -- and dig in. Remember not to use your left hand!

Unrequited Love and the Hurdles of Dating in Mali

2009-12-05T17:15:00.000Z

The men are getting braver. Walking to the internet cafe in San last week, a man pulled up beside me on his moto. "Ooh la la," he said, "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere," I replied.

"May I come with you?"

Banta says the men of San have no shame. I'm beginning to wonder if the men of my village have lost their sense of shame as well.

There is a man who sits outside the boulangerie in our village all day everyday. I pass him constantly, but it wasn't until a month or so ago that I discovered he speaks English. He invited me to come talk with him whenever I liked to give him a chance to improve his English -- although middle aged, he hopes to take the TOEFL and GRE and to study in America. I never did take him up on his offer -- there are already so many people -- and I just never made the time or effort.

A few days after I'd started wearing the new running shoes my mother had sent me in the mail, the man outside the boulangerie flagged me down. He'd noticed the bright whites of my new shoes, had judged from looking at my feet that we wore the same size and wondered, could he have my old shoes?

I declined -- I'd already found a recipient for my castaways -- and pedaled on.

Yesterday, he became even braver. His arm was out to hail me, flapping as I rode my bike by, as if he wanted to tell me my tire was flat or that he was hoping to catch a ride. Instead, he asked if I was married. Because, as it turned out, he was not yet married and men and women belong together, he said. They keep each other from being lonely and maybe I'd be interested in that? I told him I didn't think so. "Well, he said, "I have courage." Courage for pestering me in the far-fetched hopes of obtaining my hand in marriage, I suppose.

When I tell Aissa these stories she immediately starts analyzing whether the man in question could support me at the standard to which se imagines I am accustomed. He sits by the boulangerie doing nothing all day, she muses, he can't possibly have any money.

When I tell the stories to banta, she laughs and laughs. If all the men were that brave, if they weren't scared, (if they had no shame), our compound would be full from morning to night, she says.

I just can't figure out what the appeal is. I feel like a country bumpkin most days next to Malian girls, trying to make it in the city, wearing outdated fashions in the wrong sizes. Malian girls my age look good and they have the bodies to back it up. Could it be my pale skin? Is it my wealth? Or is it my closeness to Barack Obama by virtue of being an American citizen?

Whatever the appeal, it seems to be getting stronger. There are fewer old men jokingly proposing marriage and more young men, almost desperate in their pleas for consideration.

Adama and Lahmine, Moustapha and Mapha are my overprotective older brothers. They keep tabs on me and my visitors. If anyone asks for me at night, no matter who, they keep that person from visiting.

On market day a few weeks ago, a young man approached me as I chatted with a friend. He asked for a word with me and refused to speak in Bambara, telling me of his desire to get to know me and become friends in French so that those around us wouldn't understand (that must mean he has some shame left). I told him what Aissata and Sitan have told me to say to these requests: "I don't make friends, I'm too busy." It feels like such a lie on so many levels -- I have plenty of time, wads of it adding up spent drinking tea and doing precisely what I've just told him I don't do: making friends. It's what I'm here for, after all. But I say it to the young man anyway. He insists he is someone I should get to know. He asks where my house is. I walk away. "May I at least know your name?" he calls out after me.

The next market day, there was a knock on the compound door. It was the young man from the previous week. He'd asked all around the village until he found someone to tell him where I lived. When he asked at the health clinic, Mapha told him he wouldn't find me at home. When he asked Adama, Adama shook his head and said he didn't know where exactly I lived. But someone had shown him the way and the young man spilled out his desires to know me, the reasons why he was worthy of my friendship. I said goodbye and shut the door, laughing about his visit with Banta.

Within minutes there's a second knock and it's Moustapha, just checking in. He won't say, but Banta and I know Adama sent him to check on me. Later, Banta tells me that Moustapha went so far as to alert the chief of the village to the young man's visit.

Part of me likes how protective they are. My own brother has never showed any interest in taking on such a role and it makes me feel safe and cared for.

At other times, I wish they would trust me to take care of myself. I can't have visitors or talk to anyone without arousing the suspicions of Adama. Moustapha is sure I'm sneaking off to San to see a man rather than to do work.

Tthere are plenty of volunteers who date Malian men and women, and more than enough good looking, eligible Malian men to date. I'm all for it, given the right guy, the right situation. It just makes things harder when every man you meet professes to love at first site. It makes it harder when you live in a tiny community where everyone knows your business. It makes it harder when you don't speak the same language. It is hard enough to try to bridge cultural divides in my every day life here without adding dating on top of that. And then there are my overprotective brothers and a delicate balance of convincing coworkers that I am serious and here to work.

Nonetheless, female Peace Corps volunteers here in Mali face a completely different experience than our male counterparts simply because we are, for the most part, single women of a marriageable age, living alone. Navigating our place within Malian culture is a constantly funny, flattering, and frustrating maze.

For now, I will take the men's loss of shame as a good sign. I'll take it as a sign that I'm looking more and more like I know what I'm doing, where I'm going, and where I belong.

Fresh Meat

2009-12-01T12:38:00.004Z

Last Wednesday, Jennifer and I walked into San's market, basket in one hand, a grocery list in another. The list was long: potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, flour, sugar, canned corn, eggs. Market was packed, and we jostled our way through women haggling over fish, determined to get the best deal on potatoes, to find the freshest green beans. While we were busy preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, the Malians surrounding us were shopping for the biggest Muslim holiday of the year: Tabaski.

For months now, Malians have been preparing for Tabaski. A couple weeks ago, the trucks packed with bleating sheep heading for Bamako grew ever more constant and steady. Buses were empty of people but piled high with sheep on top, big and long-horned, certain to be sold at a high price. One such bus broke down in my village and I cycled past, piercing bleats of sheep with their legs tied together following me as I rode from one side of the village to the other.

The sheep are expensive -- especially if they're big and fat -- and Mapha spent over $200 American dollars on three sheep: one for him, one for his first wife, and one for his second wife. Adama was the lucky one, though. A group of French volunteers had passed through our village the previous month, bringing with them Goustav, the sheep that had been given to them by their friends from the village they had been in prior to coming to ours. Goustav was large with splendid horns and a clean white coat. A couple of the French girls, vegetarians, couldn't stomach the idea of seeing dear Goustav killed and skinned, reduced to meat in a sauce. But neither could they take Goustav with them on the plane to France.

And so, on the day the French waved goodbye to the village and headed for Bamako, Adama found himself the proud new owner of Goustav. He put down hay and built a shelter for Goustav to shield him from the harsh sun. Sitan fed Goustav the leftovers and I gave a shout out to Goustav on the radio. And yet -- Goustav never became the adored family pet that the French girls might have imagined. After Goustav attacked Le Vieux, Adama's youngest son, the family was practically counting down the days to the days to when Goustav's throat would be cut.

That day came last Saturday, the first day of the three-day Tabaski celebration. And while the French girls may not have intended such a fate for Goustav, perhaps they had seen something in Adama that told them he was an animal lover too. In fact, Adama has never been able to kill an animal. Not even a chicken, definitely not a small goat -- he just can't do it. When I arrived on Saturday morning, I found Goustav hanging upside down from the shelter that had once kept him safe from the sun, Adama standing by but refusing to participate as another man skinned the animal and removed its entrails.

A lifeless Goustav.

Goustav was soon reduced to hunks of meat that Sitan and I chopped and added to the pot, along with onions and garlic and tomatoes. Adama piled a good portion onto a plate and lifted it onto his daughter's head. After killing your own sheep, portions of the meat are given to relatives and family friends, and especially to the elder members of the community who may not have been able to buy a sheep of their own.

Banta is one of those old women. On Saturday morning, when I left for Adama's, she stayed in the compound, afraid to leave lest those wishing to give her meat found a locked door. When I arrived home from Adama's I found Banta and a bucket filled to the top with meat. There was more meat in the village than I had ever seen in my life. Dark red slabs everywhere. As I worked my way through the streets wishing friends another peaceful year, I came away with a couple of my own pieces of raw meat. I carried them awkwardly in my hand on the way home, presenting them to Banta to add to the pile overflowing from her bucket.

In my village, Tabaski is the time to eat well, greet family and friends, and dress up in your best clothes. I spend the whole weekend feeling underdressed next to women in fancy basin outfits covered in intricate embroidery. I second guess my decision not to get my hair braided. I pass the weekend rushing from house to house, worried I won't make it to everyone's house in time to wish them a peaceful year, many children, and good health. The smell of good food hangs in the air, but the bleating of sheep no longer follows me. "Ala ka ce ko nogoya" is the blessing I get the most, which translates roughly as "May God make this year easier to find a man." But the blessings that mean the most are the ones I hear from those in the village who have made me feel so much like a part of their own family. "May we be together this year," they say, "May you return safely to your family in America." "May we see each other in the years to come."

Mamou and Sitan Looking Good

A year ago, I wandered the streets nervously on Tabaski. I knew barely any blessings in Bambara and I remember stopping at Adama's to give them. "Aw sambé sambé," I said, "Ala ka san were jiranna." "Is that it?" he asked, "you're done already?"

On Monday morning, I wake up early to bike to San. The smell of meat beginning to go rancid hangs in the air. Banta hands me a bag of meat to bring to my people in San. And as I ride through the village, passing the still sleepy houses, I am thankful: to be here, right now. Thankful for a Malian family who has guided and welcomed me just as the Indians did the Pilgrims so long ago on a different shore.

All Aboard

2009-11-03T15:33:00.006Z

Jennifer spotted the boat from the rooftop of our hotel in Gao, a town on the edge of the Sahara desert in the North of Mali. Emerging from the mosquito net we'd slept under, she looked out over Gao's market and neighborhoods, and there it was: a three-story cruiser docked on the banks of the Niger river.

The boat left Gao for Mopti at 2PM and we were on it, comfortably settled into our 3rd class cabin. Upon closer inspection, the boat has proved itself to be a sort of Malian Noah's Ark, with hoards of goats and donkeys and cows stuffed together at the bow of the boat, leading us down the river. It's crowded with people camping out on the decks of the boat and baskets of goods that will be sold as we travel. There seem to be almost as many boat employees as passengers. There are captains and drivers, hoards of cooks and a mess of men to load the boat's cargo. There is the boat doctor and an old man whose only job seems to be to scare away village children from the boat when we dock. To get to the 3rd class cabin, Jennifer and I shimmy down a narrow corridor on the bottom deck of the boat, past women cooking on their charcoal stoves just as they would at home. The smell of rice and sauce, fried plantains and eggs waft into our cabin and we roll over in our bunks, talking to one another over the sputtering hum of the motor.

Leaving Gao, we glide by sand dunes lit by the afternoon son. The boat made its maiden voyage on the Niger in 1964 and it does not move quickly. We've calculated that we are moving at perhaps 10 kilometers an hour, slow enough for the kids in the villages we pass to run along the shore after us, arms raised and voices calling out to us.

Fatoumata shares our cabin the first night of our voyage. She is on her way to work in a school in a village not easily reached by car. Most of the passengers are in similar circumstances. Unlike Jennifer and I, who are on the boat to take in the landscape and in the hopes of spotting hippos, our fellow passengers live in villages and towns without access by paved road. And Northern Mali isn't the ideal place for unpaved roads. The ground is so sandy that cars and buses regularly and inevitably break down, sometimes for days, in remote areas. It is much easier (although more expensive) to take the boat. But the Niger is not a deep river. And come February, the boat will slowly cut back on its route, until when school is out in May, Fatoumata will be forced to travel home to Gao by car, taking a chance on the sandy roads.

The next day, the scenery turns to pure sand. Hills of sand stretch as far as the eye to see, with only a line of green mapped out along the water line. There is a marshy island not too far from land, stuffed with mud houses bunched close together. As we pass, there is a flurry of commotion and men and women jump into the pirogues (wooden boats shaped like canoes), waiting by shore. A man with a suitcase gestures wildly to a young boy, and then they are in the pirogue and making their way for our boat, the young boy pushing down on a long, thick stick to move their pirogue towards us. There is a second, bigger village near shore, but there is no dock, and so we cut the motor and stay still in the water as pirogues come at us from all directions. Naked boys swim out to us, clambering up over the rails of the ship, defenseless and unsuspecting pirates. Women hold up baskets of bread and fresh fish to the deck of the ship and they are traded for baskets of oranges and sweet potatoes. Goats teeter on the pirogues, doing their best to find their sea legs as their owners brandish them and haggle over prices.

Finally, the horn sounds. Two short blasts, and the naked boys are jumping back into the water. Luggage is hurled from the boat into the little pirogues, and Fatoumata jumps into one of the pirogues too -- we've reached her destination.

At every stop we make, whether on shore or stalled in the water, a market springs up. There are women on our boat who spend their lives this way, riding up and down the river selling bananas , potatoes, tea. The villagers sell cakes and fresh bread, camel's cheese, and hunks of meat so big they are carried in a wheelbarrow onto the boat. At dinner, a tiny morsel will appear in the bowls Babou serves to Jennifer and me in our cabin.

Jennifer and I move around the ship, sitting in the shade watching the villages go by. We stare into the pea-green water as cucumber peels and other remains from the first class passengers' lunch are hurled overboard. The women cooking below throw a well bag over the railing and pull up water with which to cook. Into the NIger go plastic bags and the bread from Gao that is now stale as a rock. In goes all the waste from the boat, animal and vegetable. When we dock in villages, the water that flows through the taps in the kitchen and next to the line of latrines is turned off, it's that dirty. But still the villagers are crowded into the shallow water, washing their motos and laundry, dishes and bodies.

On our fifth day on the boat, we are ready to reach Mopti. We are filthy from refusing to bathe in the river water and it has poured all day long, forcing us to retreat into our now crowded cabin. We pass the time with a sing along, a mix of Beyoncé and Oumou Sangaré. Zanabou convinces us to let her do our makeup, pencilling in our eyebrows with black and outlining our lips. Suddenly, Aissata cries "Lights!" And there they are -- the lights of Mopti. We pack up our bags and put on our hats. The plank is lowered and we shout out goodbyes. The boat will stop here only long enough to unload the passengers and goats. It will continue down the Niger past Segou to Koulikoro, an old boat humming along past rice fields and villages, the cries of goats announcing its arrival.

The Promised Land

2009-10-25T14:57:00.002Z

Coby wants to escape to Spain. It was the first thing he told me when we met.

I'm not from Spain, I tell him, but good luck!

Where am I from? he asks.

America.

America would be okay too, he decides, and could I help him get there?

What do Coby and countless other young men in my village and across Mali want to escape from? From poverty and a future without hope. These young men are so sure that there is no possibility of money or a job in Mali that they are willing to risk their lives to leave.

Mothers hand me their babies and tell me to take them home with me to America. Women offer to be my servant in exchange for a new life in America. Men propose marriage.

We spend hours and hours arguing over whether or not Coby should leave. He argues that there's no money to be found in Mali. I argue that he'll spend all the money he's earned on food and lodging and a ticket back to Mali, since he's sure that he'll come back. But I can't change Coby's mind. He knows he'll return with money filling his pockets, cash spilling out to build a new, concrete house and cell phones galore and meat for every meal of the day for the rest of his life: He's seen it.

Okay, well, when you press Coby, maybe he hasn't actually seen it. But he's heard about it alright, and he'll make it to Spain or America whether I help him or not. His wife, Little Banta, sits nearby holding their second child in her arms.

Coby does not speak Spanish or English. He speaks just enough French to make Banta think he's taking on airs (C'est ça!), and he's trained to grow millet and peanuts. He's not sure what kind of job he'll find in Spain, but he's sure there will be something. Maybe he'll clean someone's house, maybe he'll clean the streets. He's sure there must be jobs which toubabs think are beneath them, and he's probably right.

He doesn't know yet how he'll get there. A friend just left for Spain, but he left after his family had seen him off at the airport in Bamako, a visa and all the security that comes with it tucked into his pocket. Coby's route won't be quite so direct. Maybe he'll go up through the Sahara or across to Senegal and then take a boat from there. He's heard the stories of failure too, and there are a lot more of them. There are stories of the boys that died in the desert or the sea, stories of boys found by the police and sent straight back home, stories of boys who came home with nothing.

Coby relegates these stories to the back of his head. The story he believes in is the one of the boy who made it. It is the story of the boy who crossed the harsh desert and the high waters and landed in the world of money and opportunity. He stayed in a house with a countless number of his countrymen, found a job and before he knew it, his pockets were filled with money and he was heading for home.

I am always arguing with Coby, always coming up with reasons why he shouldn't leave. And there are many arguments to be made. But Coby keeps arguing back. And at a certain point, I run out of arguments and just have to look down and sigh. Who am I to argue over whether Coby should stay in Mali when I myself won't stay? Because, for all the hardships and pitfalls an immigrant might face, there will always be the possibility of making it big and striking it rich. And when you're not even making a dollar a day, the idea that you could make a dollar an hour, regardless of all the expenses and hardships you might face, is pretty enticing.

At a particularly weak moment, I admit to Coby that I might feel the same way had I been born a Malian citizen. I love Mali and I truly believe that for the most part, people are doing okay here. I also know, however, that the developed world is pretty darn nice. And that Mali's path to getting there, while progressing daily, is a long one.

At the end of Ramadan, a couple Peace Corps friends came to visit my village. Frustrated by my refusal to help him, Coby turned to Jennifer, dite Djellika Coulibaly, for help. When Djellika asked Coby why he wanted to go to America, he looked at her as if she was one light bulb short. Duh, there's tons of money in America. "Right," Djellika said, "because money grows on trees in America." Her voice dripped with sarcasm and we all laughed.

A few weeks later, Coby is again arguing with me about leaving for the West. "Fine. Pack your bags," I say, "but on second thought, maybe you should wait a bit. There's an economic crisis in America and there's not much money to be had."

Coby scoffs. "Djellika said money grows on trees in America."

Climate Change and Development

2009-10-12T17:06:00.003Z

When I sit under the big tree in my compound, swatting away flies, reading the latest Newsweek or Times magazine that has made its way to me, the economic crisis seems worlds away. The floods in the Philippines are difficult to imagine as I look up at skies that have not let down rain in over two weeks, despite the prayers that are sent up every morning at the mosque. When I read about the quickening impacts of climate change, however, a pit forms in my stomach. It's scary and terrifying and a solution feels far-off and unreachable.

I tried to talk to Banta about the seriousness of the effects of climate change to ease my own fears. I explained it to the best of my ability in Bambara: there are bad things in the air; the world, every single country, will get hotter; animals will die; water will dry up; the ocean will warm and the fish will die. If we don't do something to fix climate change, I said, we will be in serious trouble.

Banta responded by laughing and laughing. She untied and retied her head wrap, mussed in her fit of laughter, and recrossed her legs at the ankle. If God wills it, she told me, then, well, so be it. I looked around me, musing over her reply. I saw the sand that our mat rested upon. I saw the buckets of water pulled from a well that will be dry by December. I looked out towards the fields, empty of farmers, who were helpless as they waited for rain to soak the millet and send its stalks shooting high into the sky. And I felt the heat, a heat so all encompassing that all I could do was lay my head down, move as little as possible, and wipe the sweat away time after time.

Mali has already lived through many effects of climate change. It's a hotter country than it was when Banta was a girl. There are fewer animals for men to hunt, no elephants to trample the fields, no lions to scare the villagers into hurrying home before the sun sets due to desertification and rabid hunters. The sun is stronger and the rain comes less and less. Even though the Malian government now owns a couple of planes to seed the clouds, it is not enough. `Banta has told me that as a child, her father didn't have to do anything to his fields to get a good harvest -- no fertilizer or compost -- the soil was that good. The trees are running out, cut down for the fires that burn from early in the morning until late at night, heating porridge and millet, rice and sauce. Wood is more and more expensive, but people will continue to shell out more money. It's still significantly less than a gas stove, like I've got. Every week, a truck stops to pick up bag upon bag of charcoal. The truck is loaded so that I am sure its wooden sides will burst and charcoal will spill out across the road as it travels north towards Mopti. The charcoal will be used to heat the tea that men and women will drink across Mali. Plastic litters the roads and piles up in ditches.

After market day, one of the local women's associations sweeps up all the trash and lights it afire, the smell of burned plastic hanging in the air long after. The rivers are polluted and although fishermen on slim and colorful pirogues still dip into the water in search of a good day's catch, the fish they come back with are smaller and smaller in size and number. And while there may be fewer cars on the road here than in a developed country, the cars here do not exactly get great mileage for every liter of gas. The color and smell of the exhaust they send into the sky is sickening, especially since many, truckers especially, leave their vehicles running for hours on the side of the road, afraid that the car or truck will not manage to start again if they turn it off.

There are no great changes being made. The cars will continue to run. The women will still light their fires every morning. The trees will still be cut and the rivers will be fished, even if no one bothers to replenish the forests or rivers. The people of the village are resigned to the changes, powerless in the shadow of God's will.

How does change begin? We in the West believe we can, and should, influence change. It is our responsibility to tackle the problem of climate change, just as most believe it is our responsibility to help push developing countries forward.

My job here is a small one: to teach villagers to practice healthy behaviors, like washing their hands with soap; drinking clean water; proper weaning; preventing malaria and diarrhea; HIV/AIDS testing. If villagers are willing and motivated to accept some of these behavior changes, individuals will experience positive changes. Banta washes her hands before she eats and is sick less than she was before she began the practice. More women are feeding their babies ameliorated porridge. Sitan started birth control after her last baby was born, convincing her husband that it would benefit the entire family. Fewer girls and women wash their dishes in the drainage ditches that fill with rain water mixed in with donkey, horse, and human excrement. A few have had the courage to be tested for HIV/AIDS.

These are small achievements. They have significant impacts on individuals, even families, but they will not push Mali into the developed world. The reason Mali is locked in poverty is not due to the fact that villagers refuse to wash their hands with soap. It's a part of it, perhaps, but it is not the cause. It is a part of the solution, perhaps, but it is not the freeway to development.

We Americans have embraced behavior change as a way to push back the effects of climate change as well, although a large number continue to barge around in hummers and laugh off the effects of climate change. We try to use less water. We remember to turn off the lights as we leave the room. When we buy a new car, we go hybrid. Some of us bike or walk to work. We start gardens on rooftops and use alternative energy sources as a portion of our energy use. These are good and important changes. Their adoption does make a difference, but it is small and incremental.

The solutions to climate change and development lie in policy and infrastructure, law and government. For these are big problems which demand broad and powerful solutions.

Until governments and leaders finally agree to make the plunge, however, behavior change is all we've got. I do not have control over whether the Malian government chooses to invest in better roads and education. I have no say in the government's laws on trade and human rights. But for the next year, I will have the chance to teach a few more people how to stay just a little bit healthier.

So keep writing your Senator. Make your shower short. Carpool to work. Set the recycling on the curb. Turn off the light. Behavior change is difficult anywhere, be it Mali or America. It seems to be catching on a bit in the States -- it's become chic to be green, and hopefully it will soon be the new in-thing to wash your hands with soap in Mali. But as Americans, we are lucky in that we often feel empowered as individuals to make a difference. We believe that our vote matters and that our Senator should listen to what we have to say. Many Malians in my village feel powerless in the services (and lack their of) they receive and with the government they have. If there's a problem, unless they are in a position of power, it is doubtful that they will approach the Mayor or a government official with their concern. And so the power rests with God, up high and out of their reach.

If you're voice is ready and practiced, use it. Raise it and sing out loudly. The Malian voices are just warming up.

Babes Being Born: In honor of Maaike's Upcoming Birth!

2009-10-12T16:16:00.005Z

It's a busy time for births in the village, and Aissa is up all night assisting at birthings. Women tend to show about about 20 minutes before the baby is about to pop, rather than rushing to the clinic as soon as their water bursts. Thus the reason why quite a few women end up giving birth in donkey carts on their way to the village. Women also tend to go into labor at night, which I insist is due to their refusal to give birth while there is still water to be pulled, laundry to be done, and food to cook.

Moustapha with his first son with his second wife, Nana. Bakary is named for his mother's father, but goes by Baba. Moustapha became the toast of the town after both of his wives gave birth on the same night within one hour of each other! Both boys.

This is Mamy, Adama and Sitan's fourth child. Several weeks after giving birth, Sitan told Adama that I had told her that birth control was a good idea and requested permission to start on it. He granted permission.
Little Banta, with Old Banta's second great-grandchild, Bakoro, who has grown to be the fattest Malian babe I've ever seen.

Yes We Can! Or Maybe We Will...?

2009-09-15T12:11:00.001Z

When Aissa was newly widowed, still a young women with two daughters at home, the chief of the village called her to a meeting. A group of women from the village sat in a circle and were questioned by government health workers and foreign aid workers. Aissa did her best to keep her eyes down and her mouth shut. She dislikes being singled out and is suspicious of those she does not know. But somehow, she was spotted for something special, and just like that, before she knew it, she had been chosen to be the first matrone, or midwife, in our commune.

After being trained, Aissa returned to the village to begin the difficult task of convincing the villagers that her services were necessary and useful. She walked from house to house until finally, slowly, motos began to appear in her compound at all hours of the day, urging her to hurry --there was a birth to attend. There was no maternity to work from, no stirrups for a woman in labor, no light but the flashlight that Aissa held in her mouth by which to see at night. Nonetheless, before she had time to blink, Aissa was delivering every woman's baby. She would try to take a month of vacation every year, exhausted from long nights up until dawn, only to have people come pleading to her. "Sabali ça, Aissa," they would say, "You have to come."

Finally, a maternity was built and pre-natal consultations moved from a corner of the market area into an actual building. Eventually, a university-trained midwife and another local midwife were added to the mix. But still, when women come to the clinic, they ask for Aissa. They trust her and know her -- she was at their mothers' deliveries when they themselves were born. She knows everyone's name and where they come from.

Through all of these years, Aissa was a single mother. She lived on her own in a large compound at the end of the village in a large, 4-room cement house with a tin roof. Her daughters grew and Aissa sent them through school. They married and moved away to follow their husbands and careers.

And then, ten years ago, at the age of forty, everything changed for Aissa.

An old man came to town. HIs name was Boiré and he arrived without any fanfare or history. He came to a village where he had no family to create a home where he had none. And, so it seemed, Aissa was just the way to do so.

After seeing Aissa in town, Boiré asked about her. He learned that she was widowed, living alone, and working as a matrone. Apparently, that was all he needed to know to collect the requisite kola nuts and present them to Aissa's father in exchange for her hand in marriage.

Keep in mind the following:
1. Aissa was a forty year old, financially independent woman.
2. Boiré and Aissa had never spoken.
3. Boiré was, and is, penniless.

And yet, upon receiving the kola nuts, Aissa's father gave Boiré Aissa's hand in marriage without a second thought. Aissa was called to her father's compound, where he informed her that she would be married to Boiré upon his return from a trip to Bamako. The forty year old woman looked at her aged father, the same age as her husband to-be, and cried and cried, begged and begged. She did not want to marry again -- there was no reason for her to marry again. And she certainly did not wish to marry a man she knew nothing about. Her father would not be moved. He told her that his religion told him that a woman should not be alone without a man to guide her, and even though Aissa's tears continued to fall, the man was resolute.

The question was, though, how would Boiré guide Aissa?

Aissa made two stipulations before marrying Boiré: that she be allowed to keep both her house and her job.

Luckily, Boiré and her father agreed to the stipulations, because it soon became clear that marrying Aissa meant a comfortable retirement for Boiré.

Boiré, being from Bamako, has fine tastes. He likes coffee in the mornings, meat in his sauce, and tea each and every day. When Aissa insists there's not enough money for meat in the peanut sauce or a new packet of tea, Boiré simply straps on his shoes, rises up with the help of his cane and totters down to take out a loan. A loan that will be repaid by none other than Aissa.

As his cane indicates, Boiré is not in the best shape of his life. The man is weak and getting on in his years. Most of his teeth are gone, but there seem to be just enough to chew the tough pieces of meat Aissa buys and cooks for him. Lately, Boiré's health has been getting worse. He's sick often and his medicines are costly. Last month, Boiré's medical bills amounted to at least a quarter of Aissa's monthly salary.

Boiré is not a monster. He has had a fascinating life traveling all over Mali to help set up the National Museum in Bamako. And although when Boiré first moved in Aissa would leave every room that he entered just in case he was entertaining ideas of cutting off her head, they now seem to enjoy each other's company.

But the fact's can't be denied. There was no practical reason for Aissa to remarry. And how Aissa is better off with a man in the house is beyond me. He does not provide protection or financial support; they are not procreating; they are not in love nor does Boiré provide Aissa with emotional security; and most importantly, a forty year old woman did not wish to be married and despite being independent in every other form, she was not able or allowed to make such an important decision for herself.

This past month, a law giving more rights to women, such as inheritance rights, was passed by Mali's Congress. It lay on the president's desk waiting for a signature when riots broke out across the country against the passage of the law. Malian men, and surprisingly, women, by far and wide, were convinced that giving equality (or a watered down version of it) would lead to women obstinately disobeying their husbands, disregarding their work, and generally upsetting the entire social order.

These past weeks, I learned that my villagers were similarly worked up in their aversion to the new law. After his wife had knelt down on one knee to serve Lahmine his dinner and given him water, Lahmine told me that if the law was passed, wives everywhere would not only refuse to bring their husbands water when they come home but would also quit doing their work at all. To him, and to many of the other men I spoke with, equality means a complete disruption to the gender roles established in Malian culture. It means giving up power with the disastrous result that without men's rule, women would not necessarily demand equality and a more fair division of labor, but that women would be incapable of taking responsibility of their families and homes without the supervision and orders of men.

It's largely a language problem. There is no word for equality in Bambara. Lahmine, like everyone else, translates equality as sameness: An bee kelen (We are all the same). But that's just not possible in a society as gender segregated as this. To say that men and women are the same is as much as admitting you're crazy and should be sent to the loony bin. No one, man or woman, would ever think that men and women are the same, so when I or anyone else try to talk about equality using the language of sameness, the same women who complain to me that they are tired of being disrespected and undervalued by men will deny equality as being a good thing. Men and women are simply not the same and there is no point in trying to make them so.

Moustapha told me that the law shouldn't be passed because it didn't make any sense for women to inherit money or land since they are not breadwinners. But! I said, But! Everywhere I look, women are making money. I do not know a single woman who is not engaged in some form of small enterprise, from selling street food to knitting to making brooms. Clearly, men are no longer able to comfortably provide for their family. If they did, women would not be working all hours of the day to both cook and clean and earn an extra little bit of money. Who can say that Aissa does not deserve an equal inheritance to that that her brothers will receive, when they are all breadwinners?

There is no reasoning, there is no strong argument against this law except one: men are better. Men are stronger. Men are the heads of the family, the village, the community. They are the owners of their wives and to give up any of that power would be terrifying and incomprehensible. But why, I keep asking, Why? Because, Mapha told me, men are simply better than women.

"Are you really telling me that you are better than me?" I asked Mapha, looking him straight in the eyes, my hands almost shaking.

He looked back and the joking expression that he always wears was gone from his face. "I'm not saying I'm better than you," he said, "I'm saying your husband will be better than you."

Moussa laughed as Mapha exited the room. "He's just scared," I said to Moussa, a young man with such kind eyes who just passed his Baccalaureate exam. He laughed, unwilling to join either Mapha's side nor mine.

So is that what it is, then? Is that what forces a financially independent woman like Aissa to marry again, just so that she does not upset anyone by proving that women can do just fine on their own?

Adama was the only man I talked to in favor of the law. He is also the only man I know with a relationship with his wife similar to what I hope to find in marriage. It is not purely a social obligation and financial relationship. They joke together, genuinely enjoy each other, and help each other out. When Adama tells Sitan to do something, she can say no. And then they'll joke about it. Sometimes, when Adama's late meeting me at the radio station, it's because he's been talking with Sitan and didn't want to tear himself away. Real, emotional relationships, then, could be what's missing. When you love each other, there need be no law to tell you to respect one another. When you respect each other, why would you be scared that giving equality to your partner would result in a loss of power?

Perhaps the law will not pass. Perhaps the men will settle back into their chairs and call for a glass of water. Perhaps Soté will still kneel before Lahmine with a cup raised in her hand and her eyes down.

But if you look carefully, the changes can't be denied. And maybe that's why the women aren't all as riled up as I am. Maybe they know that whether or not the law passes will make no drastic difference to their daily lives. Maybe they will pursue a path that they have already chosen and in which they have more confidence will produce results. By steadily taking more control of their families through earning their own money, striving for education, and joining women's associations, perhaps women in my village feel that they are moving towards equality fast enough.

Dooni dooni. Little by little.

Of Interest

2009-08-24T17:46:00.001Z

Saving the World's Women: The Women's Crusade:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?em

Mali Protest Against Women's Rights Law:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8216568.stm

Forget Me Not

2009-08-24T15:59:00.002Z

Life in Mali is not easy. But it is easy to forget just how difficult and different it is.

It is easy to forget what it's like to take a scalding shower and sleep cuddled up under blankets. It is easy to forget that it is not normal everywhere to spend four hours waiting for a bus. That bananas should be yellow and oranges orange is quickly lost. You begin to believe that all women in short skirts are prostitutes and wonder why you had ever thought them appropriate. The smells of pine trees, folded laundry, and freshly cut grass are too foreign to hold a spot in your memory. So, too, you forget the ease of tap water and the bitter, sharp taste of real coffee.

But you do not forget what it is like to be surrounded by those who knew you before you became Samouhan. You do not forget the ease of talking in your native tongue, nor the liberty and comfort in speaking to your mother without a calling card beeping to remind you of the minutes ticking away too fast.

And ten days in Tunisia with my parents was a better reminder than I could ever have asked for. After settling down for our first cafe and gazing across the wide avenue and at the high heels streaming by, I had forgotten. As fast as I forgot how much I had missed my father's detailed stories and my mother's never ending enthusiasm, I had forgotten what it was like to go without in Mali.

Dipping into the blue Mediterranean, I did not think of how I had once shown Aissa a picture of the Atlantic for her to glimpse an idea of the great expanse a body of water can hold.

On the bus to Bizerte, a picture of Lahmine holding onto the side of the van on his way to another market did not enter my head.

Passing the fields of melon and corn, grapes and olives, pears and plums, I did not wonder whether the drought had ended in Mali.

When I turned the screws and opened the taps to wash off the salt water, I did not ask myself who had pulled water for Banta with me gone.

Walking through rich cork forests in the cool air of Ain Draham, looking out at the Algerian border, I did not consider how my village might go about replenishing its own dwindling trees, the consequence of cooking over charcoal and wood fires.

Invited to lunch at the home of a Tunisian family, I did not marvel at the splendor of a home made of cement instead of mud; I was not surprised that the meal was served with bread, drinks, salad and appetizers, rather than the bowl of rice Sitan would prepare for her family to share.

At Carthage, gazing out towards Italy from Dido's hilltop spot; from the height of Antonin's Baths; past the tall whitewashed houses draped in bougainvillea and the insulated presidential palace, I did not think of the view over the village at sunset from Adama's fields.

Bathing in the hammam with my mother, surrounded by generations of women racing back and forth with buckets of hot and cold water, enveloped in steam, I have forgotten Tata shouting directions as her daughter, Azy, takes her bucket bath in the open air.

And while sipping cafes in the Medina and wine in La Marsa; while strolling the streets of Tunis in jeans with my hair down my back, I did not feel Mali holding onto me.

Oh, sure. I talked about Mali non-stop. I gave my parents the rundown of everyone in the village. I compared everything in Tunisia to Mali. But it slipped away so fast, that sense of closeness and belonging.

Aissa called while we wandered the web of streets in Sidi Bou Said, the sun setting. Bambara sounded thick and blunt on my tongue, but there Aissa was, slipping Mali back into my consciousness and under my skin.

If it is so easy for me to leave for ten days and forget, no wonder most of us had never given Mali a thought before I became Samouhan. Small surprise, then, that the Tunisian family with whom we lunched had no idea where Mali was on the African continent until we opened up the map. It is so much easier to talk of what we know and where we are. One day, a day which promises to come faster than I am prepared for, Mali will become only memories. All I can hope is to retain the immediacy and understand the reality that I will leave behind. And I can hope for Aissa's voice to call me away from self absorption now and then, too.

The morning after Aissa called in Sidi Bou Said, I spent my last few hours wandering the streets. I stopped in a bookstore and a French publisher approached me. He asked if I lived in Tunisia. I said no, informing him that I was living in Mali. "Jesus Christ," he replied.

At the airport, I approached the desk to check-in. "This flight is for Bamako," the Air Tunis representative informed me firmly, clearly sure that I was lost and had wound up at the wrong counter. After reassuring him that I was in the right place, he asked me if I knew I needed a visa for Mali, as if still questioning my clarity of mind in going to Bamako.

Before my plane boarded, I sat down for one last cafe. Thrown together by too many people and not enough chairs, I was joined by a Tunisian man, Said, who was awaiting the arrival of a friend. He too was surprised to hear that I lived in Mali. "Life in Mali is difficult, n'est-ce pas?" he asked.

Yes, is the simple answer. But, oh, the wonders! Oh, the joys! Because, after all, when you have forgotten about espresso and indoor plumbing, it's just life in Mali.

Photo Diary

2009-08-13T17:53:00.013Z

Bath time for Fatim.

Travelling in style: Jennifer all set for a weekend of fine dining and shopping in cosmopolitan Bamako.
Give that child some ameliorated porridge!

The sun in Mali sure is strong.

Moustapha requested Johnny to come over for family portraits.

Lahmine asks about Johnny constantly now. Togomas for life.

Visiting my host family from my first two months in Mali. In the past year, my eldest host sister, La vielle, in the middle, had a baby: Prince, they call him. She's still in school, now in the same year as Kiki.

Mom and Dad. Mom insists I've lost weight since I've moved to my village. During the visit, I was fed three meals in the space of three hours.

Nothing like an afternoon resting from the heat in the hammock.

Matching outfits win hearts. And get you the best deals.

Sitan teaches Becky and me to make Okra sauce.

Hiking up to this waterfall, we came across a woman climbing too. In fliplops. With a huge basket of laundry on her head and a baby on her back.

Rainy season turns Dogon into a mass of green pastures and waterfalls.

What a treat.

An abandoned village high up in the cliffs.

You just solved one of Hassimi's riddles, didn't you, Becky?!

Walking at a snails pace.

How did the telem people build those houses oh-so-high?

Americans: Skinny and Gorgeous

2009-08-12T17:22:00.005Z

Sometimes, when I'm leaving Aissa's after a particularly good round of tea or receiving some rather sage advice from her, I imagine Aissa climbing aboard a plane for America. I imagine her coming to visit my home, meeting my family and friends, attending my wedding.

I know it's just a dream. Aissa will probably never board that plane, not only because of the logistics of obtaining a passport and visa and buying her ticket, but also because Aissa is terrified of America. She is sure that the minute she stepped off the plane in America, she would freeze to death. It is not something she jokes about, she is sure it really will happen, because she knows that in America, it is always freezing and snow is always falling.

Aissa takes advantage of a hot afternoon to nap and get her hair braided.

The weather is not the only reason Aissa would refuse to go, she also believes that white people are often violent and that war is frequent in the west. Looking through a Newsweek once, we came across a photograph of a mother crying over the casket of her son, killed in the Iraq war. Aissa was shocked to see the photo and asked me what what the picture showed. I explained it to her and she cocked her head and said, "But I thought Africans were the only people who don't like war, who cry over death."

While you and I wonder where the next war in Africa will break out and whether there will ever be peace in the Congo or the Sudan, Aissa tells me that Africans hate war.

This entry is about misperceptions. The ideas that you and I have about Africa and Africans and the beliefs that Malians hold about Americans and the West in general. There are many of them and they are often just as far from the mark as the stereotypes we hold of Africa.

Do you remember the last pair of pants or t-shirt that you gave away to Goodwill the last time you cleaned out your closet? Well, there's a good chance it ended up somewhere in Africa. On market day, piles and piles of cast-off clothes from America are sold. They are cheaper than buying Malian fabric and having it tailored. And here, Malians call them "dead toubab clothes." Because why would you ever give away clothing that is still in good condition? It only makes sense that the toubabs must have died first, and their clothes sold after their death. Aissa however, puts a little twist on this story. She is convinced, that not only are the t-shirts and dresses and skirts from dead toubabs, but that toubab soldiers rape and pillage toubab villages just so that they can steal their clothes and sell them to African markets. No wonder the woman shakes her head rapidly from side to side in a fierce negative at any suggestion of going to America.

Tata doesn't care to go to America either. She has seen American pornography and is highly disturbed by it. Why, she wants to know, don't Americans chase porn stars out of their villages and force them to create a village of only porn stars so that the rest of the population aren't bothered by them? Tata assumes that people watch porn in America in the same way that t.v. is watched here in Mali: where there is a television, there is a crowd. To Tata, Americans must gather in public, in large groups, on the streets, to watch porn. She wants no part in that.

Others would do anything to make it to America. They have heard about the money that grows on trees. And since Americans don't have to pound millet or pull water from the wall, they must just sit around relaxing around the clock. They have seen pictures of Americans and they know that there is not one single ugly American, let alone a poor one. White people are all skinny, I've heard, and only eat one egg for lunch.

You don't have to go all the way to America to meet this cute American! Jennifer in Bamako for a weekend of fine dining and shopping.

Last week, Becky came to visit, another testament to the belief that there are no ugly Americans. We trekked around the village greeting and stopped at Djennaba's house for tea. The woman boiling the tea looked at the two of us laughing and smiling together and asked who Becky was. I replied that she was my good friend from home and the woman put her hand to her mouth in surprise. "Eh?!" she cried, "Toubabs have friendships?!"

Becky proves that toubabs make friendships too. Here she is with her togoma, Banta Traore.

Some of the misconceptions are eerily similar to forgotten stereotypes of Africans held by Westerners: When I first got to my village, Banta, walked up to me laughing. She stuck her arm out and began rubbing at her skin, demonstrating to me that the black pigment does not, in fact, rub off. And no matter how many times I try to convince her that I already knew that before I arrived, that there are lots of black people, even Malians, in America, every time a new white visitor comes to the village, she performs the same demonstration. One by one, she seems to think, she will prove to white people that the black does not rub off.

Getting rid of these misconceptions isn't helped by the fact that all white people, no matter where they come from, are called toubabs and they are all assumed to speak toubabukan, or, white-speak. In fact, toubabukan refers only to French, leading to much confusion when a white person who does not speak "white-speak" comes to Mali.

I cannot blame Aissa or Banta for their misconceptions of the place I come from. They have had little contact with foreigners up to now and have few resources to investigate whether America really is covered in snow year round. Most people in my village have not traveled wide and far, and what they know is what they hear, what they see.

But as Americans, we do have the resources to find out whether our stereotypes of Africa and Africans are valid. We don't have to be left in the dark, but it seems we often choose keep the lights off. Before I left for Mali, my father told me he had absolutely no stereotypes of Africa or Africans. "Oh, Come on, John," my mom said, "we all have some." But he refused to admit that he had any such preconceived notions. Not long after I had arrived, however, my dad called. He'd read in one of my emails that I was running in the fields outside my village, and he was worried. Wasn't I scared, he asked. What about all the animals -- the elephants, the lions, the hippos. I calmed his fears and told him the only things bothering me on my runs were mosquitos: a run in Mali is not an African safari.

Lions and Chimps and Johnny, Oh My!

2009-07-23T13:51:00.006Z

Up the hill from the National Museum in Bamako is the zoo. I didn't know where it was before I came, so I told the taxi driver to take us to the wara so, the lion's house. It worked, and here we are, my brother and I, the first member of my family that I've seen in over a year. We walk over a bridge, straining our eyes for the first sign of wildlife, but there doesn't seem to be much in the water except algae. But then, there it is! A small elephant, sleeping, somehow oblivious to the fact that here we are, Johnny all the way from America and me with my love of elephants, and the little guy won't even look our way.

We march on and Johnny points us towards the chimpanzees. We stare at them fascinated by how close the chimp's hands are to ours, his ears so similar. Two boys come up to us holding hands, wearing shorts and ratty t-shirts. Have you seen the serpents yet, they ask? And the lions? It's clear they spend every penny they have on trips to the Bamako Zoo, and they become our tour guards. We see ostrich and hyenas, lions and monkeys. Most of the animals are behind metal bars, in stark concrete cages. One lion sits atop a cement block, curled up, his tail tucked in. In every cage lie slabs of meat, pork, we guess by the naive pigs wandering around.

The animals we spy on from outside the bars are not animals from the bush of Mali. They are from the golden days when elephants still passed through my village every year and everyone prayed that the huge animals wouldn't step in their fields. When Banta was a girl, lions roamed the bush and at dusk it was time to leave the fields for home in case of lions. Lahmine brings his gun into the fields with him now, but he only brings back a bird or a rabbit, and that's if he's lucky. Boys in my village hunt lizards. Johnny is so excited over them at first, pointing them out to me at the zoo as if they're one of the exhibits. He has not yet realized their ubiquity, how they're everywhere, including inside your house, on your chair, under the map you've hung from the wall. If you're not a lizard hunter, the only thing to find in the bush are djelis, Lassine tells me, devil creatures that harass people at night if you run into them in the fields. The lions at the zoo are as foreign to the Malians as they are to Johnny and me.

There is an aquarium at the zoo too. It's inside and cooler, and the room is filled with small fish tanks, just like the one that little kids in America keep in their rooms and feed once a day. The fish inside are nondescript, no bigger than the dried fish I see at market every week, but the Malians at the zoo with us find them fascinating, and the boys who are guiding Johnny and I point out each one to us, searching our eyes for an amazed expression that will match theirs.

The star attraction to the museum among Peace Corps volunteers is a dead manatee. It's all I heard about before coming, nothing about the lions or the elephant, just that there was a dead manatee. We stumble across it under a tree after we've seen the hyenas. It's in an elevated rectangular glass box, but the box is broken and the manatee has been eaten by various insects or birds or who knows what. If we didn't know it was a manatee, we'd have know idea what it was, it'd just be some sort of gross black carcass. But Johnny doesn't seem disappointed, he snaps pictures and the two boys lead us onwards.

The next day, Johnny and I take a bus up to my village. It's cooler out, it rained yesterday, and so I only have to fan Johnny a couple times during the trip to keep him in good spirits. We step off the bus in my village and I'm nervous. I have been talking about his visit for months; I have told everyone that my big brother, my koroce is coming. But as we walk into my compound the knots in my stomach relax and a smile spreads across my face. I hear Banta running towards us, "Eh Alah! U nana!" Lahmine's girls, all of them, come running and already everyone is testing Johnny's Bambara, laughing, anxious to shake his hand. Men leaving the mosque after four o'clock prayer hear the noise and come running to see what's going on.

We spend the next couple of days parading Johnny through the village. The chief of the village has named my brother Lahmine Daou, the same name as my jatigi, my host. Malians have special relationships with those who share their name, and call them n togoma. Johnny is Lahmine's togoma and Lahmine is constantly checking in on Johnny. He calls me, barely says hello, and then asks to speak to his togoma. When he comes over in the morning, he asks for his togoma. When he gets back from market, he has fruit for his togoma.

Johnny sporting a gift from his togoma

On Friday night, I drag Johnny to the radio station. He's nervous for his first on-air performance on Radio Benkadi, but I know our show will be a success. It's a drama: we're two mosquitos, flying around looking for people to bite and pass malaria on to them. But when we reach my village, we can't find anyone to bite because they're all sleeping under mosquito nets. Johnny stumbles through the Bambara, but the results are in: my best radio show yet. We walk out of the studio to find that everyone has been recording it onto their cell phones. The next day at market everyone makes mosquito noises and crows over how Johnny couldn't bite them last night because they were sleeping under nets. We make our way through piles of dried fish and baskets of rice and beans. We buy sweet potatoes for Lahmine, bananas for Adama and Moustapha, VivaCafé for Banta. And everywhere we go, hands reach out to shake Johnny's, everyone says that we look alike and, thanks to being introduced to Johnny over the radio, no one calls Johnny my husband.

Johnny and Moustapha. Johnny's shirt is made from bogolan, mud fabric, a gift from Moustapha.

My brother is showered with gifts. A shirt from Moustapha, another from Lahmine, special dishes from Banta and Tata, a hat from Aissa, grilled meat from Adama, fruits and all the delicacies Mali offers. The night before Johnny is to leave, Mapha delivers a chicken to our house. Banta is anxious about making sure we'll have a chance to eat it before Johnny leaves, but women don't usually kill chickens, and Lahmine's not home. She walks back and forth between Lahmine's compound and ours, waiting for him to come home. Finally, we hear the sounds of the chicken dying in the lane behind my house and rush outside. Banta is quick to begin taking out the feathers and she's up long after we've gone to bed, cooking Johnny's chicken so he can eat it for breakfast.

On the way back to Bamako its hot, and we've managed to find the only seats in the bus with absolutely no wind. I hand Johnny his own fan and neither of us put our fans down until we reach Bamako. We have dinner in Bamako and reminisce about the time we got locked out of the house and Johnny climbed the tree and went through the skylight above my bed to open the door. We laugh at how I used to run after Johnny when we were little, begging him to play games with me. And when that failed, how I bossed and bossed and bossed him until he cried. Who could have guessed he would visit me at my home in Mali? Who would have guessed I would teach him Bambara and we would sit in my compound, looking up at the stars, asking his togoma, Lahmine, what stars mean to Malians?

See you next year, brother, old pal.

For more photos of Johnny's visit to Mali, go to http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=33086184&id=2900418

The Road

2009-07-13T15:22:00.002Z

Whenever I leave my village, I pack up my bag, shutter my windows and lock my door, and take leave of Banta. She calls out blessings for my safe return as I head out of the compound, and I walk out to the main road that runs through the center of the village. It is a cement road, a Malian freeway, really, that runs all the way from Bamako to the far reaches of northern Mali, through Segou and San, Sevare and Gao, right up to distant Kidal.

Some Malians must ride their bike 30K from their village, take a crowded van along a dusty and pot-filled dirt just to reach the main road at which they will sit for hours waiting for a bus to come by. Others, without a moto or bike or even a donkey cart, walk miles to the main road from their village. When I want to catch a ride out of my village, I simply walk to the road, take a seat near friends, and drink tea until a bus comes zooming through. The doors of the bus will open, the prendtigi will shout at me, asking where I want to go, and I, hurrying to get my bag and take one last sip of tea, will shout out my reply, running to jump on the bus. And just like that, I'm off.

The road is not wide, but it is powerful. The width of an American one lane street, this Malian freeway is the size of the dead end road that runs into my parents' home in Oregon. But unlike North Grand Street, which hosts traffic such as old VW Buses and small Prius', the gidron running through my village sees semi-trucks filled with charcoal and millet, countless Land Rovers with aid workers basking in air conditioning, buses piled high with mattresses and bikes, donkey carts and Peulh women carrying calabash bowls of milk on their heads, motos zooming in and out of it all. It is thanks to the road that my village is growing and prospering. It is thanks to the road that I am even there.

Before the road, there were only two donkey carts in the whole village. They were cumbersome affairs, unable to travel through thick sand, and they traveled neither far nor frequently. In those days, Banta tells me, no one had heard of Bamako much less traveled there. The farthest they traveled was to Baramandougou, for their market once a week, on Sundays, a distance of 20K. Travel was often by river, and Baramandougou, on the banks of the Bani river, was the hub of the area. Boats travelled up and down the river, to Djenne and Mopti, trading millet and fish. Mali's major hubs fell along river routes: Bamako, Segou, Mopti, even Tombouctou.

The road came shortly after Independence, in 1961 or 1962, at the same time that kids started going to school. The leaders of Baramandougou recognized how influential the new road would be and pushed for it to be built through their village. But their appeals went unheard and my village made its name on the map instead, another stop on the road from Bamako.

A paved road means progress. It means income and trade and markets and wealth and resources. It means easy access for government officials and NGOs and donor agencies. It means a school and clinic right their in your own village. It means that your children will not have to walk three miles to school. It means that your wife will not give birth in a donkey cart on the long trip to get to the clinic. It means the clinic will not have run out of vaccinations for your children by the time they make it out to your village. It means not only knowledge of Bamako, not only trips to Bamako, but years spent working or studying in Bamako. A paved road means that when ATT, Mali's President, travels north, he will throw money out the window of his car and it will be your family and neighbors who will pick the money up. A paved road means fresh fruits and vegetables; fresh fish and meat. It not only means fresh food, it means there will be money to buy that food.

My village is now a destination: people stop to buy lunch and dinner; every Saturday buses and donkey carts come from miles around to buy and sell at market. Business is thriving and bricks are being made for new buildings and houses.

As urban areas in Mali become richer and rural areas become poorer, Malians are flocking to urban centers. While my village is by no means urban, it too is growing. The mayor's office hopes that the village will one day become a circle capital, a sub-regional center and hub for commerce.

Baramandougou, the village by the river, has shrunk. It still hosts a market on Sundays, but almost no one goes. Many of its villagers have moved to my village. The road has passed over Baramandougou, surpassing the power of the river with its force, moving as fast as the trucks that zoom along the pavement to supply money and resources to the villages blessed to have access to it. For those villages on winding dirt roads, miles from pavement, the road and the progress that comes with it continues to evades them.

The new mayor of our commune, Moussa Daou, took office in June, and almost every village in the commune has demanded a paved road connecting their village to ours during Moussa's term. These villages, too, have taken note of the power of the road.

In the evenings, once the heat of the day has dimmed, I leave my bike at Aissa's and head out for a run on the road, up a hill towards the village of Bora. Fields stretch out beside me, and now that the rain is beginning, I pass farmers hurrying to finish their work before the sun sets. Buses breeze by me on their way to Bamako and vans head back into my village from market. The road is narrow, and when I see a truck coming towards me, I jump off the road and run on the edge of fields, crickets jumping out of my way. I turn around and run back towards my village and what I see is this: a village stretching out across sand and dirt, separated by a winding mass of concrete. I see a road that is skinny and worn, crowded and overflowing. I see a road that is the best single mean of escaping poverty for my community. This is the real thing: a road to progress.

From Day to Day

2009-07-13T15:12:00.002Z

Members of the Peulh population held a masked dance in my village. I was entertaining a representative from World Vision when Banta came running to find me, out of breath and breathing hard: "There's a masked dance! Come Quick!" Good thing we hurried, the dancers could not be seen after sunset.

Aissa has a month of vacation from her work at the clinic. Her daughter, Tata, has come to visit, along with her three children. Aissa is relaxed and spends her time napping and ordering Tata and the grandkids around. Above, we sat around dranking tea while Aissa worked on taking the tight braids out of her granddaughter's hair.
Banta makes her living selling cookies: namti and dedegé, made with rice, millet, peanuts and sugar. I have become her apprentice and she swears that once I return to America, I will make millions selling Banta's own cookies.

Life As I Know It

2009-06-25T15:49:00.001Z

When you are a 23 year old white American girl living in a small village in Mali, do not sleep late. If it is cold enough that you can sleep inside, be up when you hear the morning call to prayer. If you're late, you'll wake to Lahmine calling your name, and you'll stumble to pull a tafé around your waist and unlock the door, stubbing your toe on the concrete floor on the way.

At the well, do not let one of the other women pull your water. If you don't pull your own water, well, what kind of woman are you, and you'll never be respected by any woman in the village. Push your glasses up on your nose and make sure your feet are steady before lifting the 20 liter bucket. If it is a mud well and you have a baby on your back, be especially careful.

Carry the water home and wash your laundry. Be sure your compound walls are high, or else you'll find men and women critiquing the way you wash your clothes and dishes and how you spend your time at all hours of day. Ah, Samouhan, they will say, why don't you pay me to wash your clothes! Ah Samouhan, they will say to you, you have gotten so fat here! Do not be alarmed. Do not cry. It is a compliment.

When you hop on your bike and head to work, greet everyone you see. Ask them how they slept, how their family slept, how everyone in their compound is, and the people in the house, and the children and their wives or husband. Do not forget to inquire about their mothers. The children will shout Bonjour Toubabu musoni! Donne moi un cadeau! Their arms will grow tired but their voices won't as they call after you. In time, they will learn your name and all you will hear will be Iniché, Samouhan! I te i ka negeso di n ma? (Won't you give me your bike?)

Watch out for hop-ons. Some of the more vigorous and bold children will run after your bike and try to hop on to the fender. Be stern and swat them away. If someone gives you a chicken, hang him upside down from your handlebars and ride on. He will not squawk.

At the clinic, weigh babies until one of them pees on you. Some days, you and Mapha will ride out to the surrounding villages. Keep calm if you go out to a village and the town crier starts running around telling everyone the white doctor is here to give everyone free medicine.

On your way home, stop to chat with the old men sitting in the shade and passing the hours. They will tell you that all Daou's are bean eaters. Vehemently deny this and respond by asking them if their wives are cooking beans to feed them for lunch. They will laugh uproariously. If you are a Daou, never, ever, admit to eating beans. If you are a Coulibaly, a Konaté, a Thera... Well. What can I say. You're probably eating beans as you read this.

When the sun gets too hot to move, lay down on the mat under the tree with Banta and listen to the latest gossip about how Hadjara is treating her help. Shell peanuts until blisters form on your thumb. It is rainy season and soon peanuts will be planted. Grab a handful of peanuts and slurp small sips of tea out of a shot glass to go with them. Participate in the gossip but be careful with your Bambara. If you call a baptism a baby's beheading instead of a baby's hair-cutting, be ready for laughter to explode and for the women around you to roll around on the mat.

In the afternoon, once the heat has died down, it's time to go out again. Drink more tea. Deny being a bean eater. Give health talks. Arrange meetings. Plan projects. Push away the bit of anxiety in the pit of your stomach that makes you wonder if you'll leave in two years with nothing much to show for it.

When you receive marriage proposals, agree on the following conditions: that you will be your husband's only wife; that your husband will help you pull water and do the laundry; that you and your husband will take turns cooking. You will hear many marriage proposals, but no one will accept your conditions.

When the sun begins to set, it is time to head home. You will need to sweep your compound, and it will be so dusty that you'd best be sure to tie a scarf around your face or you'll end up choking with the dust. You will need to pull more water. You will be tired after pulling your fourth bucket, but do not lose courage: you will look at little Banta, Banta's granddaughter, who has a bucket of water on her head and another hanging from her arm and she's got a big round belly because she's seven months pregnant in 110 degree heat.

When Banta leaves as the call to prayer starts, take your bucket and step into your open-roof latrine and look out over the rooftops and up at the palm trees and wonder how far America really is while you pour scoops of water over your head and wash away the salt that covers your body.

Millet, millet, and more millet will be your diet. Escape it by sneaking away to fancy lunches with Aissa so that you can eat rice and a piece of meat and even couscous now and then. Plan cooking lessons with Sitan so that you do not have to eat to every day. But dinner will always be millet-rice with a Shea butter sauce. Wash your hands with soap and hand the soap to Banta to wash her hands, and then Banta will say Bisimillah, and then you will eat. Start with small handfuls until you have practiced eating with your hands. Never touch the food with your left hand. Do not touch the salt with your left hand, do not touch the serving spoon with your left hand. Do not offer your left hand in greeting or accept anything with your left hand. When you are full, curl your hand around your last bite and lick all the sauce off your fingers.

If it is one of the nights of your radio show, carry a flashlight. If you do not carry a flashlight and you are walking in the dark and you come across an old woman and greet her, she will run away from you with both arms in the air, screaming bloody murder. She will think that you, so white and bright, are the devil.

After your radio show, Adama will play it back to you and you will cringe at your Bambara. In several months, listen to one of the old tapes and let yourself be astounded by how much better your Bambara is now. Adama will be nervous to let you walk home alone because your village is a truck stop, and you will walk home together analyzing the last show. Adama will be upbeat, bouncing like he always is after he's been on-air.

When you're ready for bed, hang your mosquito net next to Banta's mattress. Sleep right next to her for safety, so that no one can steel your headlamp while you're sleeping. If you have a theft problem, it is the only solution. Mapha, Moustapha, and Adama will take turns keeping guard over your compound after the latest theft, but they will stop after Mapha and Lahmine catch each other: each man thinking the other was the thief, Mapha with a brick in his hand and the two of them jumping each other until Mapha will break the silent night with his laughter once he's realized it's Lahmine.

Lay down under the mosquito netting with Banta next to you, and if it is still early and you are one of the first to bed, look up at the stars and listen to the sounds of men and women boiling tea and listening to the radio and boys whistling in the field and the donkey in the next compound braying. Fall asleep only after rubbing shea oil into your callused hands.

Tomorrow morning, wake up early. Be ready for Lahmine. Greet everyone you see and ask about their mothers. Do not eat beans or admit to liking beans. You will do all this and you will be surprised by how fast the days go by. Though you will miss so many things about home, the idea of leaving here will create a pit in your stomach and your tear ducts will grow full. Blink, grab your buckets, and head for the well.

Post Script: To Have and To Hold

2009-06-25T15:47:00.000Z

When I returned to my village, I came home from the clinic one day to find Soté, Lahmine and Bébé having lunch and making tea. Lahmine was reclined in his chair, his youngest daughter, Barro, on his lap. Bébé and Soté were making lunch together and everyone seemed relaxed and at ease.

Another day, Banta rushed home to take me to a masked dance, where I found Soté strapping Barro onto Bébé's lap.

Perhaps I can never understand, I thought to myself. Perhaps marital bliss is possible even if a man does take two wives. Perhaps my Western perspective just doesn't let me see how life really is here.

Days later, I'm sitting with Soté as she makes the macaroni she sells at market when Nba, her eldest daughter returns from Bébé's compound. Immediately, Soté asked her everything about it. How many pots did Bébé have? How many chairs were at the compound?

Lahmine is never around anymore. He is always at Bébé's compound. Sometimes he comes just for a minute or two, and Soté and I know he's not staying if he leaves his moto outside the compound walls -- easy access for his trip back to Bébé. I don't know how Soté couldn't be upset. I'm not even married to the man, and I'm upset that he's disappeared. "Did you get lost?" I ask him when he shows up just to say hello after I haven't seen him in days. Barro has started running out to the road and calling for Lahmine at random times, even though there's no sign of her father down the road.

I know it's getting to Soté too. When Lahmine comes but doesn't stay, Soté starts to pick fights with him, and I sit between them wondering if this is what it feels like when you're parents are getting a divorce. One night, I'm with Soté and she makes me call Lahmine to ask when he's coming home. When I call, I can hear laughter in the background. Bébé's compound is a great hangout. Their are not babies running around sick and crying. There are plenty of chairs and one of Lahmine's friends shares the compound. When I ask Lahmine when he's coming home, I feel like the unwanted rock around his neck and I hate Soté for making me call and Lahmine for making Soté feel lonely and desperate.

Now that it's been a month, Lahmine has started to spend a couple nights at Soté's house again. On those nights, Soté gets dressed up in one of her prettiest complies and does her eyes. She makes Lahmine something special to eat, and I can't tell you how comforted I feel to come home and find Lahmine's moto settled in for the night in their compound. All is as it should be.

At last! A way to beat the heat!

2009-05-26T12:12:00.002Z

Banta set up a hammock in our compound. But don't try to push her! She's sure she'll fall out.

To Have and To Hold

2009-05-26T11:53:00.004Z

Rain pours down from dark clouds. It hits dry dirt, land aching for water. Motos zoom by with brides holding long white, wet dresses in their arms. Their shoes are ruined. Men and women in their most beautiful boubous and complets run by, mud splattering them. It is wedding weekend in my village and all the couples have gone to sign their marriage certificate at the mayor's office. Who planned for rain? It is May, and the earth seemed to have resigned itself to its parched future.

More than sixty couples will be married this weekend. Family members have come in from Bamako and Mopti for the festivities. One man returns from Cape Verde to marry his 14 year old bride. Our village is peculiar in that all marriages happen at the same time, but the reasoning behind it is quite smart.

All over Mali and West Africa, there are griots: men and women who sing the history of Mali and Sundiata, of villages and Chiefs. Today, griots make their living off of celebrations like weddings. They travel around like unwanted guests to the different parties to sing the great deeds of the family and praise men and women. In return, the family must give them money. When their are more than 20 griots in one small village, parties can get pretty expensive. In order to force the griots to split up, my village decided to host all weddings on the weekend. This way, while you may still be bothered by as many as 10 griots, at least the whole lot of them will not descend on you. And especially if you're poor, the griots will probably spend their time prying money out of the hands of richer families.

One of the many village griots singing the praises of Samouhan Daou

Lahmine Daou, my jatigi, is taking his second wife this weekend. He is tall and striking in his big white boubou on his wedding day, but his smile is bashful as ever, and he becomes nervous when his fiancé, Bebé, is late. We are waiting in the market place for all the brides to arrive before going to the mayor's office. The brides arrive in white, Western style wedding dress and everyone gathers around them, pointing and snapping pictures. For once, someone else besides me is the object of so much attention.

Lahmine, all cleaned up and ready for a wedding.

There are motos everywhere. They are driven by young men and boys doing wheelies and standing up on the moto. Look at me, girls! They seem to cry, No hands! We take bashée buses to the mayor's office -- their is one private car that shuttles back and forth with the brides and grooms. The road is full and the bashées are piled high. With motos zooming in and out and bashées careening around the road, there are many accidents. One morning, Stacy, another volunteer visiting me, and I sit at Adama's house, unable to tear our eyes off the road. It's an accident waiting to happen, but we can't look away. We take the back roads to all our destinations.
The bashée I took to the mayor's office is the yellow one in front. I was given the passenger seat to share, a position of honor. Except that sitting there, I could see all the accidents we just barely escaped from.

Arriving unscathed by flustered at the mayor's office, it's time for pictures after the couples sign the papers. Lahmine is first since he is the younger brother of the chief of the village. Bebé sits with her body leaning away from him. She looks as if she might cry. She is young, but I am afraid to guess at her age. The photos begin, and Soté, Lahmine's first wife is pushed into a group shot of Lahmine and his two wives.

Soté on her husband's wedding day.

Soté is beautiful, the mother of Lahmine's five daughters. For the past 10 or 15 years, it has been just Soté and Lahmine. Perhaps they do not love each other, perhaps they do not know or believe in a concept such as love, but after so much time alone, now Soté will be forced to share her husband. Bebé will have her own compound, and Lahmine will spread his time and money between the two. Soté is laughing today, she smiles strongly, but her jaw is set. There is a clench to her teeth. I notice her hands shake as she hands money to a griot.

I tell her how beautiful she looks; she has done her make up, put on her nicest complet. She was up for 4 hours last night putting an intricate henna design on her feet. She squeezes my hand. To whom do I hold my allegiances? To Soté? To Lahmine?

One of the brides waits to sign her marriage certificate

The signing of the marriage certificate at the mayor's office is the only part of Lahmine's wedding celebrations that Soté attends. I do not see her for the rest of the weekend. Banta tells me she has retreated to her mother's house. I ask Banta if Soté isn't terribly sad and upset. Of course she is, Banta tells me, but that's the way it is.

Unlike American weddings, Malian weddings are not a celebration of the bride's happiness. The brides do not smile. They do not laugh. They do not speak. During three days of wedding celebrations, I will not speak one word to Bebé. As hard as this is for Soté, I wonder if Bebé is not even sadder. She is leaving her village, her family, to start a new life with a man she barely knows. A man who is at least twice her age.

Bebé at the mayor's office.

The next day, the women of the family gather. Bebé is led out of the house, a cloth over her head. We stand in a circle, and a griot sings a mournful song. It is call and answer, and the women sing back to the griot. I try to clap to the beat. Bebé sits on a stool, and her shoulders are shaking hard. The cloth is not covering her face completely, and so I can see all the tears, endless streams, rushing down her face. Bamou walks to her and pulls the cloth down to shield her. Her shoulders shake harder. An older woman takes water from a calabash bowl and begins washing Bebé's hands, her feet, and finally her face. She wipes the tears away but they stream down, a never ending river. As Bebé stands up, she kicks the stool over, and the women close in around her. They are dancing now. Her head is covered. She is a married woman now.

Later that night, Stacy and I walk with Lahmine's sisters. It is dark and the village is quiet. My village is a truck stop at night, it is loud and busy and crowded, but tonight everything is still. I am Lahmine's balaman muso today, his sister, and it is the responsibility of his sisters to prepare his wedding night. Bamou carries a wooden mat tied together with animal skin, and we follow her to an empty house, where she lays it down and covers it with a course white sheet. We sit outside the house, waiting. We wait and wait in the quiet, hot night. Namu falls asleep. Finally someone calls us, and we walk to the big tree outside my compound where everything important takes place.

The old men are already sitting there, spread out on mats, their flip flops and sandals on the ground in front of them. We unroll our own mat and wait for the brides to arrive. When they arrive, they are wearing white again, and this time, their head scarf is white too. They seem almost limp with the weight of the change tonight will bring them, exhausted from their tears. One by one, the men bless the marriages: May their life be long and they be protected. May they be blessed with many children, productive fields and much money. May they be healthy.

The blessings are finished and now it's time for the balaman musow to lead the brides to the house where each will spend the next four nights. For four nights and four days, Bebé will not leave the house we lead her to. When she emerges, she will greet all her family and friends as a married woman. When we reach the house, Lahmine is already there. He is smiling and laughing; he and his friends are drinking tea. One by one, we women walk into the house to see Bebé one last time. She is sitting on the mattress, and she is really crying now. This is it -- the end of her childhood. A friend holds her hand -- her head is uncovered, and I wonder who will hold her hand on her own wedding day. Bamou walks out last and closes the door behind Bebé. Our job as balaman musow is done. Lahmine's friend passes tea around as we walk away. Someone tells a joke and they break into laughter. Inside, Bebé cries on her marriage bed.
Ala k'a ni si bee. Ala k'a denw caman soro. K'a waari caman soro. K'a keneya bee. Ala k'a su here di.

Talk Back Beautiful Woman

2009-05-12T14:48:00.006Z

As the bus hurdles south, the piles of mangos by the side of the road grow bigger and bigger. Slowly but surely, the dirt turns a little redder, the landscape fills in with greenery and trees. We are on vacation, Joe and Ashley, Jennifer and I. Leaving Bamako, we take a car into Guinea on our way to Sierra Leone. The windows are rolled down, and I lean out of mine to eat a mango. The wind pushes against me, hard, and there is mango juice flying everywhere, covering my arms and face.

We exchange money at the border, and I come away with a wad of bills so large and fat, I'm sure I'm a millionaire. I stuff the money wherever I can fit it, in my wallet, every pocket of my backpack. We feel so uncomfortable with a half million Guinean francs each, until we realize that everyone is standing around with thick stacks of cash, inflation has risen so high in Guinea that all these bills are worth nothing. It is easy to be deceived, to think that 10,000 francs is a lot of money, when really, it's barely two dollars. Later, we'll treat ourselves to a nice dinner out in Conakry. We'll leave the house with about 200,000 francs. We'll enjoy pizza and beers until late in the evening. And it will be only as we open our wallets after we've asked for the check that we'll realize 200,000 francs doesn't get you very far, that we don't have enough money to pay the bill.

Mohammed is our driver from Conakry to Freetown. He's savvy and knows how to cross the border, how to treat the guards and policemen. He knows which soldiers must be bribed, which men have donned a uniform but are not actually soldiers (like the man who stops our car in a Canadian policeman's uniform). He signals to us with a shake of the head or a finger to his lips when then the police approach our car at checkpoints. When we approach checkpoints, Mohammed's hand is already out the window, bills pressed into his hand. He drops them on the ground and speeds off, or hands them to a soldier with whom he does not make eye contact.

The pavement ends at the border to Sierra Leone, but the soldiers and checkpoints don't. One soldier pulls us over to ask Joe for his book. At customs, the men ask Jennifer and I for our hand in marriage. They are not joking, they tell us their qualifications: one has dual citizenship in Guinea and Sierra Leone; another is willing to move to Mali. I tell them I'll mull over their offers for a week and let them know on our way back to Mali.

Crossing into Sierra Leone

We reach Freetown at sunset. It is loud and bright, the streets are narrow, the buildings colonial and skinny and tall. Freetown is perched at the top of a hill, overlooking the ocean. Especially after we've seen the beech, it's easy to forget why Sierra Leone hasn't become a tourist hotspot. But the signs are there. In the morning, we walk to a grocery store, and I see a man with both his hands cut off ("No hand, no vote); at the beach, hotels stand in ruins: It was the war that did it.

We set up camp in a fishing village, Tokeh Beach. Mountains rise up behind us and the ocean stretches out forever in front. Fishing boats with names like Talk Back Beautiful Woman and Time is Money dot the water, and men repair their nets along the shore. Kids run naked and shouting into the water with us. I float on my back and wonder how I'll be able to return to the stark landscape of Mali, to the dry, forbidding heat.

After days spent on the beach, we'd wander into town for snacks and the catch of the day.
Mountains meet the ocean

One day we take a trip to Banana Island. Our captain is Scott. He worked at a French-owned hotel before the war, and now makes his living mostly from fishing. There are few tourists these days. Downing a sachet of gin, he maneuvers our pirogue, pointing out the small villages that line the peninsula. At Banana Island, we are invited up to the retreat of two ex-Soviets, Yuri and Caesar. They are building a campement on the island, a break, as far as we can tell, from their efforts in the diamond mining business. Caesar arrived in Sierra Leone during the war, and Yuri is younger, the owner of a diamond polishing factory, with a fierce mustache and cocky soldiers. They have been drinking all day and keep our drinks full with heavy hands. Yuri holds forth on the diamond business and the lies of the film Blood Diamond. He tells us diamond smuggling is rampant and begins in on off-color remarks about the native population and the hypocrisy of Americans. As Caesar's hand travels from my back to my shoulders to my thigh, it is time to go.

Ashley, Joe, me and Jennifer on Banana Island

Leaving the pristine white sand and cool of the Atlantic is hard to to, but we hop into a car again, back to Guinea, this time to the Fouta Djalon, where a man named Hassan Ba runs a small campement for hikers, leading day hikes. Driving in, we begin to wonder if the long journey and hours of bargaining to get to the tiny village of Douky have been worth it. It's beautiful pasture and farmland, but there doesn't seem to be anything too special to see. It is when we begin our hike, descending into a crater and then up and around huge cliffs spotted with cascading waterfalls and monkeys that we realize the beauty of this place, so carefully hidden from the untrained eye.
Shoots and Ladders

Hassan speaks in acronyms and walks fast: We are BP's (Back Packers), he says, not BT's (Back Trackers). Hassan sees shapes in every cliff and rock formation. There is George Washington, there is an elephant, there is a woman brushing her hair, there is an advertisement for Viagra. The next morning, Hassan is busy getting ready for the next hike, running around in a peach colored boubou. "You're a vision in peach, Hassan," she tells him. "Yes! I am an early pigeon!" he cries back.
Hassan Ba, ready to BP

One of the hikes we did was called Indiana Jones

Hassan waves us goodbye and it is time to start for home. The greenery flashes by us, and slowly, slowly, the ground dries out, the water dries up, we are returning to the Sahel. Mud huts replace concrete houses with glass windows, and we can no longer by fresh pineapple and the biggest avocados I've ever seen on the roadside. But crossing the border back into Mali, I'm comforted to be speaking Bambara again. And this time, when the soldiers ask to marry us, they just laugh when Jennifer tells them they'll have to give Joe a whole lot of goats and cows in exchange for her. We're on our way home.

Sunset over the Fouta

Ça Chauffe

2009-04-24T17:01:00.003Z

Politics are heating up in the village! Manchuré supports the party ADEMA -- for justice, for solidarity. Since just about everyone is a member of ADEMA, the election results -- elections are Sunday -- shouldn't be too surprising. But that hasn't stopped candidates from campaigning and party members from debating. Here we come, democracy.

My Top Adviser

2009-04-18T13:35:00.003Z

Just another afternoon discussing the most important issues in development with one of my many advisers. Kotimi may not quite understand where I've materialized from, but she's got some good ideas.

Porridge is yummy and fattening.

2009-04-18T13:26:00.002Z

Our porridge program finally got off and running. In fact, it's been such a hit, that we increased the number of days that porridge is sold at the health clinic, and we're even getting requests for the porridge to be sold in porridge form -- since many women are walking 10+ Kilometers to get to the clinic. The porridge is made from millet, peanuts, beans, sugar and tomi, a citrus fruit. This is Mambourou and his mom. Mambourou is in our malnutrition program and is slowly but surely gaining weight. Eat up, Mambourou! A kadi, de!

Up and Down and All Around

2009-04-18T13:22:00.000Z

Some days, you never doubt that aid is working. You're sure that, little by little, education will improve, jobs will be created and filled, and your neighbors will start washing their hands with soap and understand that malaria is caused by mosquitos, and not eggs or the sun. Every interaction you have proves the motivation of people to move forward, to live better and longer. Moustapha tells you about the training he's just returned from and the information he'll share with your village in the hopes of improving farming techniques. You meet a woman who comes to you not for handouts but with questions on exactly what she should be feeding her child to keep him healthy and strong. It turns out that Seydou has been wanting to build soak pits in the village and just needs the technical training that you can help provide. And all you're doing is working behind the scenes, facilitating this magic, watching as your coworkers become the agents of change you always knew they could be.

But other days, the future does not look so bright. Right after your radio show about the importance of protecting yourself from HIV/AIDS, a man approaches you and tells you that what you said on the radio is not true, that HIV/AIDS is a lie. Later, Aissata will tell you that Malians will never accept the existence and danger of the disease. Your newest project falters and then crumbles before you. A nine year old who visits you every day still cannot recognize and write the first 8 letters of the alphabet. It feels like every direction you turn, you are foiled by petty dramas, strict gender roles and a hierarchy so tall and firm that there seems to be no way to get around it, the heat, the ever-present lack of money to buy anything except tea and sugar, and an undeniable belief that if God wills it to be as it is, what good is it to struggle?

Last Tuesday, Aissata and I travelled to Segou for a two-day regional Peace Corps training. We met with NGOs that work in our region, learned about what other volunteers and their counterparts are working on and discussed issues and challenges. In the region of Segou, Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts are building soak pits, improving wells, starting community gardens and tree pepinaires, teaching their villages about urine fertilization, the miracle of the Moringa tree, and improved shea butter production, weighing babies, training health workers, fighting malnutrition and teaching about child and maternal nutrition, working to improve education and literacy, helping artisans expand their businesses and improve their business practices. And we're doing it together. We are living in villages and speaking Bambara, Bomu, Peulh. And in between building capacity and struggling to make improvements, we are drinking tea, farming together, holding babies and laughing over gaffs and the latest gossip. We eat from the same bowl, attend funerals and weddings, visit sick friends. We're talking. We are talking about Mali and America. How we're different, how we're the same. About yesterday, today, tomorrow.

When a Malian counterpart from a village close to Segou demonstrated how to graft a tree, the audience was in an uproar (Eh, Alah!), you could feel the sparks, the excitement of sharing ideas.

Joel, a volunteer working with an NGO that has created the PLASA Method, a way to plant trees during hot season that uses very little water. He showed us how to plant trees using the PLASA Method. The counterparts were shaking his hand, brimming with enthusiasm over the idea, the volunteers scribbling notes and taking pictures to take the method back to their own village.

Aissata pulled aside another volunteer's homologue to explain how we've set up our malnutrition program in our village and to encourage her to do the same. "I hope that she has the courage to go through with it," Aissata told me afterward.

Alaric and his counterpart fielded question after question about how they'd managed to build a soak pit for only $1.50.

During the evaluation at the end of the training, feelings were mixed on the part of the Malian counterparts. There had been no per diem, the training had been too light on protocol, participants weren't given typed name tags.

But today, just back from the training, you can't tell me that the training wasn't a success: that the exchange of ideas, that nod of encouragement and wealth of potential for the next project wasn't the best catalyst for change in my village, in the region of Segou, in the country of Mali. Today, I know that Aissa and I will go back to our village spouting new ideas. Today, I'm sure Aissa and I will never tire, that I will never be frustrated, that Aissa will never disappoint me. Today, I cannot doubt that Aissa and I, beginning with two very different perspectives, are seeing the same future.

Obama's Bestie

2009-04-18T13:13:00.002Z

Look real close at Boré's fabric. And then just look at that stance! A man after Obama's heart. Just let me know if you'd like Obama flip flops, Obama fabric, Obama jeans, Obama underwear. The list goes on and on.

Gender-Blank? Or Just a Gender-Bender?

2009-03-26T15:08:00.002Z

Greetings are of the utmost importance here. And it's not just saying hello -- its's asking how you passed the night, did your family sleep well, how your mother is, your children, everyone in your house and your neighborhood.

But despite their breadth, these greetings go no farther in depth than a standard "How are you?" Everyone is always doing just fine, no problems at all.

It's to the point that when I ask Lahmine about his dying mother, he always tells me she is doing a little better: "A k'aphsa," he says. I received the same answer when I called him in San, where he'd gone with his siblings to take his mother to the hospital. It seemed to me to be a clear sign that his mother was most certainly not doing better.

So I was surprised when I asked Aissa how she had slept and she shook her head and said she hadn't slept a wink, that she'd been up all night worrying.

Aissa says she lays in bed unable to sleep not because of the heat, like me, but because she's worrying about her future.

Aissa is a widowed mother of two, both grown women moved out of our village. She lives with her father-in-law, Boré, who once worked at the National Museum in Bamako and lists two of his dearest friends as John Kennedy and Barack Obama.

Age is hard to guess here, and almost no one knows their birthday. (Asked by a doctor how old she was, Banta confidently stated her age as 100. The doctor laughed and recorded her birthdate as January 1, 1948). But Aissa is somewhere in her late middle ages, and she really should, like the other women in her age group, be sitting sitting in a lounge chair in the shade everyday, issuing orders and getting fat.

But Aissa gave birth to no sons, and daughters are not yours to keep. Although women keep their last name after marrying in Malian culture, they become members (almost property) of their husband's family. Your daughter is no longer yours -- she is the daughter of her mother-in-law. Wholly. Completely. It is this new mother who she will care for in her old age.

And so Aissa continues working at the health clinic, scared and unsure and tired, forever worrying over who will care for her when she finally retires. It's not exactly like her salary allows the savings of a comfortable retirement fund.

Aissa's fears over aging are just one of the hundreds of angles through which to examine the role of women in my village, in Mali. And while I know that everything is constantly changing --that slowly but surely, women will gain equality -- the struggle these women face in reaching equality will be a long one. The biggest battle will be an understanding by both genders that women are equal to men.

My gender neutral (I've come to think of it as gender-blank) status means that men speak to me quite openly about what they seem to see as distinct differences between men and women, as though I'm not a member of the gender of which they speak. Men joke with me about how great having multiple wives is, especially when that means you get to sleep with a young girl. And immediately after trying to convince me of their progressiveness, many of my male friends will insist to me that women must first, as a priority, respect their husbands; that men are the "chefs de la famille"; that women may make good managers, but they could never be successful money-making businesswomen; that women should never take on the role of mayor; that their rightful place is in the home.

While I am accepted as a Westerner -- and therefore as an independent woman and close to an equal to men -- I must understand the differences between me and Malian women that make it impossible for Malian women to behave as American women. That is the message I take away from the men in my village.

But perhaps lately I 'd begun to take my status as "other" for granted, or at least as a get-away-from-jail-free card. I thought I could act as an American woman, not as a Malian woman.

Even though I have begun to see myself as "gender-blank," there seems to be a shred of femininity hanging onto me. Friends -- men and women -- have started trying to convince me that I really ought to hurry and find a husband when I get back to America, before I get too old and undesirable. Even the way people talk about my singleness (Samouhan man ce soro folo) seems to imply that I'm not married yet because I haven't been able to find anyone who wanted me, that I haven't been able to hold down a man.

A more noticeable sign that I should take note from Malian women has been reactions to my clothing. First there was the Pants Incident in the market, and now, the excitement of me wearing a headscarf when I leave my compound.

To my neighbors and friends and the random people who walk up to me and comment on the scarf, I've never looked so good! I can't help but wonder if everyone wouldn't have been more comfortable if I'd been wearing the headscarf all along? Because although I'm assured that I can wear whatever I want since I'm unmarried, I sure am past the marrying age and I'm also spending a whole lot of time with married men.

I forgot the headscarf at home one day, dashing off to market after work. As I was buying tomatoes, a group of women called me over. They asked me where my headscarf was, and when I told them I'd left it at home, they cried out "Samouhan! You're no good! Did you not pray today either?" Nope. I hadn't prayed. You're right, I said, I'm just awful.

It was International Women's Day on March 8, a holiday I never knew existed until I got here. We didn't celebrate on the 8th though. The Chief of the village and his counselors, along with the mayor's office, decided we should wait until March 12, when a group of Americans touring Mali from Shenandoah University stopped in my village to get a better idea of real life in Mali.

I couldn't figure out why they'd decided to celebrate International Women's Day with the toubabs. We all assembled at the mayor's office, where the Americans were greeted by the village authorities, but no reference was made to the significance of the holiday, no greeting extended to the delegation of women assembled in the back, all wearing their International Women's Day fabric. The women toured my village with us the whole day, their only privilege seeming to be riding on the Americans' air-conditioned bus from the mayor's office to the radio station to lunch.

Aissa is completely financially independent from men. She is well-educated, speaks flawless French, and was the first matrone in our entire commune. She worked for eight years without a salary and has gained the confidence of the commune -- women and men. She, although often deferring to men and never straying outside of what she sees as her role, certainly recognizes her worth, strength, importance. And there is the woman my friend Jennifer befriended in Bamako, who holds a senior position with a bank, owns her own house and cars. Even so, she is struggling to find a husband who she feels is her equal, and she wonders whether the best she can do will be to become a man's second or third wife. There is Banta, who had the courage to leave a husband she had never wanted to be with, who also does not rely on a man for her own security. Banta, who tells me that some people no longer speak to her after she left her husband. There is the woman who insists on practicing family planning despite her husband's adversity to it. And there is every woman in my village who has taken the well-being of herself and her children into her own hands by joining a women's association or embarking on a small enterprise, like selling bean cakes or juice on the roadside.

Donni donni, kononi be se ka pan. Little by little, the little bird can fly.

2009-03-26T14:37:00.002Z

At the end of my day, when I'm heading home, I stop by Lahmine's compound. He's usually not home yet, but his wife, Soté, is, getting dinner together or giving the kids their baths. This is Sote sifting millet flour.

A family portrait: Sote with three of her five daughters. Clockwise, they are Batouma, Baro and Npa.

This one's the biggest bean-eater of them all.

2009-03-25T16:00:00.004Z

This is Aissata Konaté, my homologue, stand-in mother, friend and ally. I tell her I'm going to vote for her for Tene's mayor (elections are in April). She laughs. Then she tells me to eat more.

These photos are from the closing ceremony of our Peace Corps training at Tubani So.

Snapshots

2009-03-08T10:38:00.002Z

Market day is Saturday. Each week, my village comes alive on Saturday: fresh fish come from the river in Djenne, clothes and nails and pots and calabash bowls and well bags all come from San, and kola nuts and cucumbers and carrots and peanut butter potatoes and rice and women selling spaghetti and hibiscus juice and donuts all arrive from all the surrounding villages. They come by donkey carts, by foot, by moto, or on mini buses piled so high with goods and people that they're twice their size and you're sure they'll tip. On my latest trip to the market, I wore pants. While buying soap, I was approached by an old man, who began yelling at me in French about the impropriety of a woman wearing pants in his country. Good thing I haven't worn jeans: the only time I've seen a woman wearing jeans was on a teenager. And she was the talk of the village for a week, after which the jeans were never seen again.

I was riding my bike home from the health clinic one day when I felt a car slow beside me. I turned to look at it to see a car filled with white tourists, all pointing at me, clearly terribly curious over what I could possibly be doing in a small village. One took out his camera and snapped a photo.

My phone was stolen off of my window ledge, leading to an inconclusive search for the thief via the footprints left in my compound. That was followed by an announcement every five minutes on the radio that my phone had been stolen, and that the thief would be killed if my phone was not returned. Yep, killed. As you can imagine, my phone was returned pretty darn quick. Three weeks later, I'm still getting asked about my phone, and not just by my villagers. I was on a bus from Djenne and a man, after learning my name, asked if my phone had been returned.

I had my first visit from home last week, Marika. We had a whirlwind trip of Mali with quite a few highlights. Including: a visit to my village during which we were treated like queens and given at least four dishes at every meal and singing a song in French on my village's radio station. Despite that we were laughing through the whole song and using my Nalgene water bottle as a drum, the radio director's phone was ringing off the hook with calls about the wild success of our performance. So if you've always dreamed of performing on the radio, you're always welcome here. Just an afternoon drinking tea in village. Would you like some tea with your mousse?

The biggest mud building in the world: Djenne's mud mosque.

Marika and I were in Bamako for a few days, where we spent quite a bit of time sampling the delicious street food the capital has to offer. One morning we were enjoying fried plantain and brochettes sandwiches. After stuffing the last bite into our mouths, we looked around for a place to throw our trash. [As a side note, Mali has not yet developed a trash disposal system. It doesn't help that everything in Mali comes in little plastic bags: your groceries, your vaccination card, your notebook, the donuts you bought for your snack. Malians love plastic. Which means that there's a whole lot of plastic piled up in the streets, floating in the wells, and worst of all perhaps, being burned. My village, for example, does sweep the streets of the market every week into many piles of plastic. Where to put them? Just burn them.] So when Marika and I didn't see a great place for our trash, I turned to the woman who had made our sandwiches and asked her if there was a receptacle for our trash. She nodded at me very seriously and held out her hand for my trash. I gave it to her, and just as seriously, she hurled it into the street in front of us.

Up next: A group of Americans make a visit to my village and we begin ameliorated porridge demonstrations at the clinic.

Stranded on Dry Land

2009-02-13T10:33:00.000Z

Water is always on my mind. The necessity of fetching water. The temperature of water. The cleanliness of the water: are their worms in this one? Did I add bleach yet? Drinking water. Bathing water. Water to wash my clothes with. Water to wash my hands. Drinking water comes from the pump at the edge of town. Washing water from the well.

Water is weighing me down, and we have five months to go until rain. When I got back to my village last week, something was different. I didn’t wake up to the sound of women and boys pulling water at the well outside of my compound walls. There were no women pounding millet and washing clothes all gathered around the neighborhood watering hole. I asked Banta what had changed: the well had dried up. There’s still a bit of water so deep down that you have to add an extra rope to your well bag but the water that comes up is dirty. Dirty and the smell is something awful.

Now we walk a little farther for our water. This well is in someone’s compound, and the hole is much smaller, its border is a tire. All of a sudden the 15 or so women who used to pull water at the big well outside my compound meander in and out of this compound, a bucket of water on their head, another outstretched in their right arm, the left arm out for balance. And then there’s me. Taking a break every five feet because my bucket’s so heavy and the extra distance that I’m now walking with my full bucket is really wearing me out. How embarrassing that the 8 year old girl goes back and forth to fetch her family’s water 10 times, and I’m exhausted by one trip.

I can’t help but wonder how long this well will last. All of us pulling water day in and day out and five more months to go. How far will we go for water come May?

I think about water when I wake up. It’s the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before the sun sets: Walk to the well to pull my water. And if Banta hasn’t already beaten me to it, I get her water too. On the days when she walks around the village selling the cookies she makes, she doesn’t even resist or tell me I don’t know how to pull water, that the bucket is never full. On those days, she hands me the bucket and moans over her tired feet.

For Ms. Tobin's Class

2009-02-13T10:17:00.002Z

Bamu, one of the matrones at the health clinic. Here she is wearing a classic Malian "complet."

The important members of the Daou family sitting around in "boubous" on Tabaski.

A young girl. Before you're married, you can wear shorter sleeves and go out without covering your head or wearing a scarf around your shoulders.

Banta's grandson sporting Malian Independence Day fabric. That's right -- there are different fabric patterns made for every holiday, every major event. Look for photos of me sporting Barack Obama fabric soon!

My Banta

2009-02-11T16:41:00.001Z

2009-02-11T16:28:00.001Z

Adama and I preparing for a radio show on diarrhea. Too bad I kept using the word for "together" instead of "dirty" throughout the show.

Big City Lights and a Return to Camp Mali

2009-01-30T21:26:00.002Z

Pulling into Bamako after my first four months at site, even Bamako seemed cosmopolitan. Traffic lights, cars everywhere, supermarkets, bars, and even a patisserie with café au lait. I had come to Bamako a few days before my Peace Corps In-Service Training began to attend a meeting about a USAID education project and just soak up Bamako and the presence of other volunteers.

The PC training was held at Tubani So, Peace Corps’ training facility – a sort of Camp Mali, complete with cafeteria and dorm-like huts. Its both an incredible sanctuary – no one calling you “toubab!” wireless Internet, meat twice a day and the occasional cake after dinner – and an alarming change from village life. All of a sudden I was surrounded by Americans 24 hours a day, speaking English constantly, to have a jam-packed schedule when I’m used to days where I struggle to maintain some sort of routine and schedule (which often consists of things like 6:30-7AM: sweep; 7-7:30: listen to the BBC).

IST was chalk full of sessions on all kinds of technical topics – farming and selling sesame; traditional medicine; starting an association; excision. There were also visits from NGOs and development organizations like the Millennium Challenge Corporation and USAID; briefings from the embassy and a visit from the Ambassador (who conceded that she had never, ever considered doing the Peace Corps, much less riding in a bush taxi); a trip to the Malian department of health that creates the posters that are hung in health clinics (Why? Who knows?).

For the final week, our Malian counterparts were invited to Tubani So to attend training with us. All of a sudden, Tubani So was overrun by almost 200 people. And of course, it was during the coldest week of cold season, with temperatures dipping into the 60s and a serious lack of blankets. My own homologue, Aissa, arrived wearing five layers of clothing. The addition of our homologues to the mix caused utter chaos. You know those things, in terms of protocol, that you take for granted? Like standing in line, taking a piece of paper and passing it down the line, speaking in turn, and not licking the spoon that everyone uses to take sugar (or even using utensils to begin with). To most Malians, these rules that are so implicit to our every move are utterly foreign. And so, dinner was a mad rush to edge your body closest to the serving bowl, training sessions were over laden with disorder, and Tubani So was filled with Malians shocked and confused by the odd behavior and overwhelming number of 70 Americans all in one place. So many computers! So much English! Pizza? Disgusting! Pancakes? Blech!

Aissa was shocked to learn that I had more than one girlfriend and we spent more than one evening doubled over in laughter at the antics of Toubabs. But when I told her that the Peace Corps director is coming to visit our village next week, she about had a panic attack. There was such fear in her eyes at the idea of the DIRECTOR of the Peace Corps, not just a toubab, not just an American, not just the director, but also a WHITE MAN. Despite trying to calm her and having one of my Malian colleagues impress upon her that Mike Simsek was only coming to meet people, to see my village, to see the work the previous volunteer had done, to see what I might do, Aissa squeezed shut her eyes and shivered. The next morning, she called our village immediately – everyone must prepare: The Patron Ba, the Director of Peace Corps Mali is coming and everything must be clean, clean, clean! Because Aissa has it in her head that if Mike spots any dirt, anything out of place, if there’s not a good chair for him, he will tell everyone, tell it to the moon, that our village is dirty, unwelcoming, who knows what he would say. Cause those toubabs sure are crazy.

Tea Time

2009-01-15T14:37:00.003Z

Back in village, I’ve been indulging in one of my favorite Malian pastimes. Tea hopping. Malians drink tea constantly. But it’s not any tea, and it’s certainly not a cup of tea that you grab on your way to work. This is Chinese green tea, served in shot glasses, in three rounds, with massive amounts of sugar, and sometimes boiled with a hint of mint. The first round of tea is quite strong, and throughout the three rounds, which could take as little as 30 minutes or last as long as 3 hours, the tea gets progressively sweeter, becoming more and more like sugar water. Tea is an art form here, and everyone wants the honor of making and serving the tea. Except me. Because pouring the tea is a complicated process of getting just the right amount of foam in each shot glass, lifting the teapot ever higher while never spilling a drop. It’s an integral part of Malian life, and while many families may not have enough money to purchase medicine or provide their children with nutritious diets, everyone has enough money to buy tea and sugar every single day.

So if I have a particularly slow day and am wondering what to do with myself, the solution is simple: tea hopping. I start out at my counterpart’s house, since she often starts drinking tea early in the afternoon, and boils it quite quickly since her father in law is most certainly addicted and is quite grumpy until he’s had his three shots. From there, I can wonder through the village, chatting and drinking tea with friends and neighbors. If I’m lucky, I might find someone who’s drinking dableni, or hibiscus tea, instead, a delicious variation. Others serve the tea with peanuts. It’s how we pass cool mornings, hot afternoons, starlit nights. When I’m talking on the radio, I know that my friends and neighbors are fanning the charcoal and setting a teapot on the fire. When I finish my shout outs and leave the radio station, I can be certain that there will be a cup waiting for me when I get home.

Confident that I wouldn’t find much of a Christmas celebration in my own village, I headed up to Mali’s Dogon country for the holiday, where I met up with over thirty other Peace Corps volunteers. Since cold season started around mid-November, I’ve watched as countless four-wheelers and buses carrying white tourists passed through my village, making their way up to visit the cliffs of Dogon. Most people in my village are confused about why white tourists are interested in visiting Mali, much less why they would want to walk up and down cliffs for several days. Nonetheless, I was sent off from my village with snacks for the journey and many benedictions for a happy holiday and safe return.

I traveled up to Dogon with another Peace Corps volunteer, Joelle, and we were able to quickly hop onto a bus heading in that direction, making friends with two wealthy Malian girls listening to music on their fancy Razor phones. In addition to the driver, Malian buses normally carry 3-4 additional operators, whose main purpose is to lean out of the door and call out the destination of the bus and the price, in our case “Sevare! Keme naani! Sevare!” If someone actually responds to their cries and wants to get on the bus, one of the men (and they’re always men) jumps out of the bus and practically pushes you back inside. Meanwhile, the driver, desperate not to lose a second, has already started the bus again, and the busmen must run to jump onto the bus before it moves on again, searching for new passengers. In addition, these men also are responsible for controlling the countless vendors who swarm the bus at every stop. But perhaps their most important duty is keeping the driver supplied with tea. After all, one shouldn’t be deprived of tea only because one is on the road! Luckily, while picking up Joelle and I, the busmen were also able to pick up charcoal, tea, and sugar. As our bus made its progress across the Sahel, the busmen fanned the charcoal and carefully poured out sweet cups of tea, washing the cups out of the window.

Once there, it was easy to see why so many tourists make the long trip out. We spent three days hiking through the cliffs, each night in a different village in our mosquito net tents under the stars, and my god, those cliffs were gorgeous. The cliffs themselves are reminiscent of what I imagine Utah might look like. But what makes the Dogon cliffs so spectacular is that there are whole villages carved into them. The villages are ruins from long ago, but of course no one really knows when. They are high up in the cliffs, and the Dogon people now believe that these ancient peoples were able to climb up to their houses because they spoke a sacred language that allowed them to scale the cliffs like lizards.

Today, the Dogon people live in villages nestled into the cliffs, or at the base of the cliffs. In general, the Dogon, because of their isolation, have largely maintained their animist beliefs. This means that you can’t exactly meander all over Dogon villages by yourself. Instead, unless you know the village well, you better be with a guide, or else risk walking into sacred areas, or areas that are forbidden to women. They still perform masked dances, and unlike in my village, the sounds of drumming are frequent. But the villages are often so isolated that their water source might be as much as a mile away; village children might have to scramble down an entire mountain to get to school; and each Dogon village speaks a different dialect, meaning that at market or when they get together, Dogon from different villages actually speak Peulh together!

Returning to my village after the holiday, I found myself in a situation I had not expected to encounter. I expected that I might be more knowledgeable about America, about the West, about the world than many Malians; that I even might be more knowledgeable about West Africa. But I never expected to know more about Mali than other Malians. It feels very strange to be teaching Malians about their own country, but I found myself riddled with all sorts of questions about Dogon country upon my return. I guess it should be no surprise when most villagers have never left our region, know nothing of Bamako. But how could I not look at my host’s wife – a woman of more than thirty years, a member of the chief of the village’s family–in wonder when told me that she had never, ever left our village of 3,000 people?

Guinea Hen Just Isn't the Same as Turkey

2009-01-13T20:37:00.000Z

With Christmas just around the corner, it couldn’t feel less like the holiday season to me. No carols on the radio, and there’s certainly no snow on the ground, although the temperature does drop during the night to as low as 70 degrees these days. I walk outside in the morning to find my neighbors bundled up in secondhand ski jackets, hats, and even gloves. Banta, the old woman who shares my compound, won’t come out of her house until the sun is already high in the sky. When I caught the cold that is spreading like wildfire through my village, my counterpart, Aissa, blamed my t-shirts. Despite the 80-degree weather, she was sure I would not have gotten sick if I had only dressed like her, wearing 3 layers with a shawl clutched tightly around her.

So maybe the Christmas spirits not really in the air, but we have been celebrating. Everyone had been talking about Tabaski for months. Once Ramadan was over, it was the holiday everyone was waiting for. The trucks passed through my village more and more frequently, piled high with sheep heading to Bamako to be sold to wealthy families. All the tailors were busy, adding finishing touches to new outfits so everyone could be in their finest for the fete. Women walked around with plastic bags on their feet, waiting for the henna designs on their feet to soak in. Girls sat around for hours braiding their hair, weaving in bangs and buns and updos. The men talked about how much meat they would eat and who had bought the largest sheep. Family members returned to their villages from jobs in Mali’s cities, from Burkina Faso, from Guinea-Bissau, where many men find work during Mali’s long dry season.

When Tabaski finally arrived, we ate and ate and ate. So many sheep to kill, and so much meat to prepare and eat before it went bad. With no refrigerators, everything had to be consumed immediately. My host family cannot afford meat during the year, and all of a sudden, there was so much meat that I received, in addition to huge bowls of rice and sauce and heaping piles of meat, a plastic sack filled with meat. When your stomach was full enough to burst, you left your compound to greet all your family and friends, to wish them a happy holiday, another good year, health, children, money, or, in my case, luck in finding a husband. “May your blessing come true,” I would respond out of politeness, only leading to quick offers to point me in the direction of the most eligible men.

After three days of feasting and greeting, the holiday was finally over and it was back to business as usual. As dry season starts to really set in, business as usual is starting, more and more, to mean sitting around or spending the day in whatever nearby village has its weekly market. Mondays in San, Tuesdays in Bankma, Wednesdays in Fangasso. Peanuts have been shelled and sold, all the millet is harvested – only those who garden vegetables are still in the fields. Women’s daily work continues of course, but men who do not seek out work in cities or neighboring countries and are not lucky enough to have a post at the health clinic or the mayor’s office are left to sit by the roadside, chewing kola nuts, watching the buses go by.

For me, though, my work is starting to pick up. Suddenly I find myself with meetings to attend, expectations and demands from my village for an expansion for our library and a budget for our radio, and, most occupying of all, a burgeoning malnutrition program that I find myself charged with. And of course to add a flair of drama, there are the constant complications of village politics. I feel as if I was born yesterday and am constantly two steps behind in trying to figure out who gets along with whom, and why Moustapha and Adama have entered into their latest feud. At the health clinic, it’s men against women, with me as a somewhat androgynous position. Not so low as a Malian woman, but still not credited with the capabilities and benefits of being a man. At the library, the director embarked on a spontaneous month long strike. However, he did not inform anyone of the strike, hoping instead that the village authorities would notice he was on strike and recognize the importance of the radio. I was the only person who noticed. And at the radio, the director is refusing to use the new accounts book bought by the treasurer, believing the proposition of a new system of keeping track of accounts to be an insult to his ability to manage the radio.

I wish I had someone in my village whose opinion I completely trusted too. But as of yet, I haven’t found that person who will give me a straightforward, unbiased account of the situation. Everyone is invested, and more and more, it seems that it’s family first. I thought I had found that person a couple weeks ago. Adama is a hardworking guy – he moved to Tene five years ago, and quickly became indispensable to Tene’s development projects. He is married with one wife and four kids, and supports himself primarily by selling gas to the motorists in our village. He is also the director of the radio, a position that is currently unpaid, although the radio personnel do receive occasional motivational payments. Adama had often told me how hard it is for him to support his wife and family, and condemned other men who took multiple wives without the financial means to support several wives and countless children. He’s a passionate advocate of education, blaming the lack of education, girls marrying too young, and teenage pregnancies for many societal problems. And so I was shocked to learn that Adama is in fact engaged to be married to his second wife. How could he support her? My shock turned to dismay when I found out that his fiancé was a girl no older than 16, still in school, who gave birth to his child last month.

Most of the men in my village tell me that if they didn’t take additional wives, there would be all kinds of old-maids running around Mali, with no man to support them. I argue back that if that was the case, why would 40 year old men need to look to 15, 16, 17 year old girls as their second or third wives? So far, I have yet to win this argument. My friends are sure that there must be either far less women in America, or else an awful lot of women are real lonely without a man.

When faced with so much blatant sexism – one friend informed me that everywhere, men always work harder than women; another told me it’s natural for men to dominant woman – it often seems odd to me that most of my friends are men. But it’s usually the men who are more educated, speak some French, who have a better idea of where I come from, whose lifestyle is more similar to mine (most women my age are terribly busy with laundry, cooking, pounding millet, pulling water, selling street food to try to find the money to buy their kids a pair of shoes or supplement their diets with some protein, and taking care of at least 4 or 5 kids). And so on Tabaski, I ate surrounded by men, sharing my bowl with men who made jokes about why I wasn’t outside eating with the women. I worry that my ambiguous status negatively impacts my relationships with the women in my village, with the wives of the men with whom I spend my time. It’s a precarious position, and like a politician, I want the support of all Tene’s constituents.

Obama on the Mind

2009-01-13T20:34:00.000Z

I headed up to Djenne nervously sporting my Obama pins for November 4th. Djenne is a popular tourist destination in Mali due to a huge mud mosque, but I rode up to Djenne in a mini-bus full of venders from my village heading to Djenne’s market. Typical of buses from my region, the bus was overloaded to an extreme, with all the venders’ wares piled twice as high as the bus on the roof, and the inside equally packed. I had been given a pot of privilege, in the front seat, but of course, the front seat was not only mine to be had. I shared it wit three other passengers, and as we kept stopping over and over to pick up more passengers, despite what looked to me like an already overflowing bus, I found that there were four of us sitting in the front seat and three more facing us, sitting on the dashboard.

A friend of mine is a volunteer in Djenne and had made friends with a Swedish hotel owner there, who had agreed to let us watch the elections on the BBC at her hotel. The day of November 4th, walking around town, we were easily spotted as Americans, and Malians would call out to us asking what we thought the results were or wishing us luck. When we triumphantly skipped home in the morning at 6am after just watching Barack’s speech, the congratulations were already upon us. It was as if we were the ones who had pushed Barack to victory, although, I am shamed and infuriated to report, only one of us had actually received her ballot in time to vote for Obama, despite the fact that we are here in Mali on the behalf of the U.S. government.

Back in my village, I had never expected that my Malian friends could be as excited about Barack’s victory as I. But they were. I continued to receive constant congratulations on the victory, and one friend, every time he entered my concession, would cry “Vive Obama!” Several more were intent on planning a celebratory party that unfortunately never came to pass but was a constant theme of discussion. I never thought that their expectations for Barack would be higher than mine. But they are – my friends are sure that Barack will bring peace to the world and solve all Africa’s problems and just save the world in general, and I find myself worrying that my president will disappoint them. Everyone wants to see the pictures of Barack in my Newsweek’s, to hear the latest on how Obama (commonly and affectionately referred to as “Obamba”) is starting to get things back on track.

However big of a star Barack and his family have become in America, I’m beginning to get a small idea of what fame is like right here in Tene. In my village, there is no bigger star than me, and I am reminded of it every minute.

There are no paparazzi, but there is the village gossip train. Somehow it seems that the whole village knows about my every move, from how much water I use daily to what I buy at the corner shop, to what time I go to bed and whether I received a phone call last Tuesday. Just the other day, a friend of mine started laughing about a story she’d heard about me refusing to cross a road that had become a rushing river one rainy day. It hasn’t rained for a month, but stories of me are always circulating.

But the worst was when I found out that even the people I drank tea and walked around town with were under scrutiny, and that, just like a celebrity, my star would rise or fall depending on how I chose my friends. I had gone over to my counterpart, Aissa’s house for tea, when she sat me down for a serious talk. My neighbor, Kadia, is the second wife of the mayor, and a boisterous and outgoing character. We made friends early on, when we ran into each other both walking to the Independence Day celebration, and ever since, Kadia has taken me under her wing, taking me to greet people around town, and inviting me over for tea whenever she’s not busy in the fields. I’ve always been aware that Kadia is rather meddlesome and definitely in some people’s business, but it hadn’t occurred to me just how much until Aissa told me that she and my host, Lahmine and his wife and family, were now in a heated battle with Kadia, and it was ruining my reputation to be seen spending so much time with not only an enemy, but also with a woman who puts her nose where it doesn’t belong.

What had Kadia done? Lahmine and his wife, Soté, have six daughters and no sons, and apparently Kadia strongly pushed Lahmine to take a second wife, largely based on the fact that Soté seemed incapable of bearing sons. Undoubtedly, Soté was quite offended and upset by Kadia’s intrusion, and Soté and Kadia ended up getting into a big fight, which, as the story goes, ended with mush pushing and hitting and many, many broken calabash bowls and the stalemate that exists between Kadia and Lahmine and his family to this day (it may interest you to note that yes, Lahmine did take a second wife).

The consequences of this for me mean that I am not to spend any time with Kadia. I can say good morning to her from across our compound walls and ask her about her day, but I am no longer to accompany her around the village or accept an invitation for tea. The fact of the matter is that my relations with Lahmine and his family are of the utmost importance, and it has also been made clear to me that all the authorities and highly respected villagers are watching who I’m spending my time with, so I’d better be choose my friends wisely. But how odd to have to choose your friends like this in order to be a successful volunteer! And, really, how difficult, when you have no way of judging and assessing social status and character in a social environment so different from the one you’re used to. (You may disagree with my choice to follow orders and ditch Kadia, but I believe if you were in my place, you’d do the same. It is not my place to question the existing social order in this way at this time, over this, nor is it acceptable for me to provoke conflict for the sake of making a point. Here, I am a member of my host’s family and I am in allegiance with them).

So how does everyone know what I’m doing every second of the day? Well, there is always, always, someone watching. How the white woman washes her dishes, brushes her teeth, does her laundry, and sits in her chair are all burning questions easily answered by watching me whenever I step outside of my little mud house. Little kids and old men and women – no one is above spending a good ten minutes (at least), watching me over the concession walls.

Luckily, I have a bodyguard who shoos away anyone especially troublesome and nosy, or the kids who really would just like to spend hours with their noses pressed up against my door. Her name is Banta, and she’s the old woman who shares my compound. The village kids live in fear of being seen by Banta when all they’re hoping for is a quick peak at me. I’ll see them tiptoeing around Banta’s house, shoulders pressed against the wall and ears pricked in an effort to hear whether or not Banta may stir. Banta encourages me to do as she does if she’s out and unable to protect me from the thirsty swarms – grab a branch off the lonely tree in my compound, and run after them, threatening a whipping. I have, clearly, flatly refused to do so, but Banta continues to lecture me on the proper stroke of the stick in order to most effectively scare the kids out of the compound.

Banta, however, is not able to protect me from everyone, and the attention comes from all directions. Just recently, I was hit on in a most inappropriate manner by the sous-prefet of my village. Commonly known as the “Commandant,” Sekou Boundy is the highest-ranking government official in our commune, the closest American equivalent I can think of would be a governor. He’d always been a bit overly friendly and had many times invited me over (opportunities I had always side-stepped), and given me a hard time for not spending more time with him. He signaled his interest in me by shaking my hand in a particular way, in which, you scratch the other person’s hand with your middle finger. I cannot describe the chills that went through me upon him doing so (the highest-ranking official in the village!), nor my frustration when I told my Peace Corps supervisor, who happened to be visiting me to see how I was doing at the time, and she insisted it must have been an accident. Fame is not all fun and games.

I saw my star brighten a couple weeks ago, when I made my radio debut a couple weeks ago. Tene has a local radio station established with the help of the last Peace Corps volunteer in my village. Part of my job while I’m here is to give health animations out over the radio, which only runs from about 8PM to 11 or 12AM every night, depending on how long the solar batteries last. I had gone down to the radio station just to hang out with the guys working there, but before I knew it, they’d convinced me that I’d just get on air briefly to greet the village and introduce myself. But after doing just that and having a bit of a tortured chat with the broadcaster, in which I was forced to admit at one point that I couldn’t at all understand what he was saying, Adama, the broadcaster turned to me and said, “Okay, Samouhan, so what would you like to tell Tene and the commune about being healthy?” My eyes must have look so betrayed looking back at him! I had told him again and again before we got on air how poor my Bambara was, how it was absolutely impossible that I give a health animation that very night, and yet…! Here he was demanding one. And so I mumbled something about washing your hands with soap and keeping clean. Adama was laughing hysterically at me and after we got off air, he said, “You really can’t speak Bambara, can you?!” No kidding, Adama, no kidding.

Somehow, my dismal Bambara did not distract from an ever-expanding fan base due to my radio debut. For weeks afterwards, people were still complimenting me on my radio emission and when I wasn’t on air the following Sunday, there was much disappointment. I would go over to people’s houses only to listen to them mimic exactly what I had said on the radio. Well, maybe that means the message about washing your hands with soap is really sinking in? Now of course, everyone and their mother wants me to give them a shout-out on the radio. Everyone wants the inhabitants of the 80 kilometers that the radio station broadcasts to know that they are a very close friend of the toubab muso, the white woman.

There are perks to being a celebrity, however. Like being offered a chair to sit in wherever I go, and sometimes little kids will come over to my house after school and curtsy and say “Bonsoir, Madame,” over and over as they bob up and down. And then, just a couple days ago, I was waiting to catch a bus into San on the side of the road outside of the clinic I work at to meet up with other Peace Corps volunteers for Thanksgiving. I had been waiting for about a half an hour for a bus to come by (there is no timetable), when the Chief of the clinic came out to tell me that they’d had to call the ambulance from San to come pick up a woman in labor. Twenty minutes later and I was still there and the ambulance had arrived. The Chief motioned me over, and settled me into the front seat of the ambulance for a speedy ride into San! And what grandeur! The whole front seat to myself, we whizzed by the over-weighted buses and made no stops for more passengers or to let street venders hop onto the bus to screech what they were selling. Although I must admit that my delight in the fast ride in was shaken a bit when we arrived into San and only slowed down to 80 kilometers as we sped through the crowded and narrow streets of San. Was it really any more dangerous than a slow bus with a driver who can barely see for all the people and goods in his bus? Probably not.

Steamy and Sweaty

2009-01-13T20:32:00.000Z

The last few weeks have been spent settling into my mud hut and learning the different roads that wind through my village. I introduce myself over and over again, despite my growing belief that people secretly already know my name, and only ask me to introduce myself as a way of forging conversation. Everyone wants to meet me, to talk with me, to have me visit. One woman came to my compound complaining that I hadn’t visited her: I had no idea what her name was or where she lived. Slowly, I’m beginning to remember faces, if not the countless names.

I spend my days trying to build some kind of routine out of days that could stretch out forever. These first couple months are mainly a time for me to try to get to know my village before I start any projects. This strategy makes a lot of sense – I can’t possibly know what’s needed until I’ve gotten to know what’s going on here. But it’s difficult not to have a schedule, so I’ve been trying to create a bit of structure for myself, even if all it entails is leaving my own compound to drink tea in the afternoons with my neighbors.

There were a couple parties in the last couple weeks. The first was the celebration of Mali’s Independence Day on September 22nd. There was a celebration at the Sous-Prefet’s office, where griots sang, and all the important officials spoke. I was also introduced a number of times, but, thank goodness, was not asked to speak. After the ceremony, we all trooped over to the mayor’s house for a big feast, but, it being Ramadan, no one could eat any of the huge platters of food, except me and the few Christians present.

The next party was a real celebration: the end of Ramadan. When I came back from my morning run in the fields one morning to find all the village awake, dressed in their finest clothes and buzzing everywhere, I realized that the moon must have shown itself after I had gone to bed the night before: Ramadan and a month of fasting was over. The party continued for three days, but the first day was the most fun. No one went to work (in the fields or at the health center or at the mayor’s office), and everyone spent the day eating and going around greeting friends and wishing them another good year. I went around with Banta, the old woman who shares my compound in the morning, and she seemed to delight in showing me around to all her friends. The greetings consisted primarily of about one million blessings, of which only about two of them I could understand. Maybe next year I’ll have mastered them.

After the end of Ramadan, things have been getting back to normal. Everyone is in a better mood and drinking tea again in the afternoons to pass the time. It’s a busy time in the fields though – rice is ready to be harvested, corn, millet, watermelon, and oh, the peanuts!! Fresh peanuts, boiled peanuts, roasted peanuts, I’m eating them all. I went over to my homologue, Aissata’s house one day to find piles and piles of peanut plants unearthed and spread over her compound. We spent the afternoon pulling the peanuts off of the plants.

I’m beginning to worry about the information I give out about America. I get so many questions about what life is like in America, and no matter how I try to explain about how big America is and how things can be very different depending on who you are, or where you are, I’m afraid that everything I say is taken as the absolute truth. And of course, there’s no one to either back up or contest what I say. Some of the questions are funny – as almost all the questions about winter in America are. Aissa, for example, told me that in school she’d learned that when an African gets off the plane in America or France in the winter, they immediately turn to ice! And so many people are shocked that in America men can only have one wife, or even that America and France are not the same place. But when the questions are about the fields and farming in America, I find myself struggling along – for what do I really know about agriculture in the U.S.?!

I’ve found a few people who I can talk politics with, including Bocar, the vaccinator at the health center. As you may remember, I was promised a bike by Peace Corps, but still haven’t received one, due to budget constraints or a hold up at customs, no one’s really sure. When Bocar asked where my bike was, I said, “Listen, Bocar, There’s an economic crisis in America.” And, oh, Bocar just started laughing hysterically. He listens to the radio a lot, and agrees with me that Obama had better win. Aissa, on the other hand, did not take the economic crisis so lightly. When I was explaining it to her, she immediately began to worry about what it would mean for developing nations, a serious concern for all of the developing world and certainly Mali, a country that relies heavily on foreign aid.

Its reliance on foreign aid is obvious: all of the community buildings (mayor’s office, schools) have been built by foreign NGOs; the mosquito nets and anti-malaria treatments given to pregnant women are provided by USAID. The aid is expected by the community, and the disappearance of it would be disastrous.

In other news, I may have contracted scabies, which is pretty gross. My body is covered in hundreds of bites, and the nights have been pretty miserable. But I just got my scabies lotion, so hopefully in no time at all my skin will once again be as good as gold.

I feel like I’m making friends. Like when I go to the market on Saturdays (when the village’s population swells by what feels like 500%), and people I’ve met call me over to see what I’ve bought. Or when I’m walking through the village and there are compounds where I know people’s names and feel comfortable walking in and sitting down for 10 minutes or three hours. Step by step.

Preparing to Walk Into the Wild (Or at Least the Brush of Mali)

2009-01-13T20:30:00.000Z

[For the past two months, I’ve been in training to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali. Training consists of language, cultural, and technical training. For the most part, I’ve been living with a homestay family in a village named Banankoro just south of Bamako (Mali’s capital), and every couple of weeks, I return to Tubani So, the PC training center, where I’m reunited with the 70 other trainees who signed up to be here with me.

I lucked out in my placement with a host family – not only is my family educated so they all speak French and I can actually communicate with them, but my father is a teacher and my mother is a nurse so we have more money than most families meaning that I eat really well. And most importantly, they were incredibly welcoming to me. My mother would examine my feet every night for mosquito nights, tell me how to sit so that I would digest my food properly, and decide whether I should bathe with hot or cold water.]

The last weeks in homestay village were comfortable, falling into an easy routine: peanut butter and bread after my morning bucket bath; class: lunch; making tea with my family and gossiping or stumbling over my broken phrases in Bambara’ more class and sitting around with my teachers, laughing about cultural differences or making hibiscus tea; home to take my bucket bath before the soap opera started followed by dinner; and then more gossiping and tea and cards before I brushed my teeth and tucked under my mosquito net for the night.

It’s rainy season, and we’ve had lots of rain, and even one chilly afternoon when the wind was blowing and I shivered under my rain jacket. My room had perpetually wet spots from the roof leaking, and getting to school without getting wet (or, more importantly, some horrible disease that had grown in the standing water) was more than impossible. One cooler night felt like the perfect temperature to me but my family was freezing and bundled up in their cold-weather clothes (which for my youngest sister, means soccer cleats on her feet). The discussion turned to how cold it gets in America, and my sister turned to me and said, “Samouhan, isn’t it true that in America, when snow falls on you it kills you?”

For the most part, it’s still been quite hot, and one very hot Saturday afternoon, I was having lunch with my host mother inside the house, where we could escape the sun a bit (unlike my room, built with a tin roof which attracts the sun and makes me bake and sweat every second, my family’s house is concrete and quite the cool respite). It was still hot though, and my mother, not satisfied with my assurances that I was quite fine, began yelling for my brother Sylvain to come into the room. Sylvain came in and started fanning me. For the entire meal. Imagine me – already eating the best of the family’s food, sitting on one of the coveted chairs, a well-off American in Mali – being fanned by my Malian younger brother.

I’ve become good friends with one of my language teachers, Augusta. We have fun speaking French together, playing with her daughters, and she’s taught me how to make gnomi, a Malian snack/rice pastry and the tea that Malians drink in three rounds, in tiny shot glasses with lots of sugar throughout the day. She also shares my passion for the Malian soap opera Au Couer du Pèche and takes me to the tailor to advise me on what looks good and is appropriate for me to wear: i.e. “Non, Samouhan, only Ghanaian women would wear something that short!”

Another of my language tutors, Oscar (both Oscar and Augusta are Christian, thus their Christian names), burst out laughing when we were walking home from school together one day and I greeted a family we passed. When I asked him what was so funny, he informed me that Malians find my voice hilarious – when I speak, many people think I must be joking, apparently. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that my Bambara accent must be pretty hysterical too.

I’ve also had a bit of technical training, which has largely consisted of learning how to make ameliorated porridge, oral rehydration system, and this important distinction between American and Malian cultures: In Mali, washing your hands does not mean washing your hands with soap. What’s more, washing your hands with soap is understood by many to wash away all good luck. As a health volunteer, my job is to improve the health of my community, mainly through activities like baby weighing and doing animations for my community on different health topics. While I plan to do these things in my village – one of the big projects my village wants me to start is animating on the local radio station—I also am lucky in that I can be involved in a number of different, non-health related activities. My first three months in Téné will be centered upon getting to know my community, learning about the needs of my community and how I can fit into those needs, and improving my Bambara, since I won’t be too good on the radio if I can’t understand the questions of the people who call into my show!

My Bambara is improving though. The best feeling is when I learn something in class and then go home and understand what someone’s saying. Like when I was home one day and a visitor was over and I spoke to him for a few minutes in my limited Bambara, and then he turned to my mother and they began jabbering so fast I couldn’t keep up. Until I heard my mother say, in relation to me, “A hakili kadi. Cinen don,” meaning “She’s very smart, it’s true.” Or, on the one day that I walked out of my compound wearing my hair down and passed a construction project, on the day after I had learned adjectives, and could hear all the men saying I was pretty. My steps in language learning are slow but moving forward. At my permanent site in Téné, I will continue to learn Bambara, but this time without a teacher who speaks English, or even someone who is trained as a teacher.

Leaving Banankoro, my homestay village, was hard. I’d become so comfortable with my family and I’d gotten used to my routines and grown to love my long walk over the hill to school every morning. I loved that every day I would do something to cause someone in my family to say “Oh, Samouhan, you didn’t really do that, did you?” or, “Agh! Samouhan!” when I did something outrageous or surprising like tell the visitor to quit calling me “Toubab muso” (white woman). I’ll miss playing cards with my brothers and watching the soap opera – none of my neighbors seem to have a television in my permanent site. I’ll miss how well I eat and the fact that my family has an indoor bathroom, which may not have functioning plumbing, but at least I can take my bucket shower in there when it’s pouring down rain.

My sister, Kiki, is coming to have dinner at Tubaniso, the PC training center, on Thursday, though, which will be fun and will help me feel like I’m still in touch with my family.

And now, the next step in my adventure is about to begin:

On Friday, I will swear in at the U.S. Embassy as a real, live Peace Corps volunteer (provided I pass my language test this afternoon, that is). And then…and then, I head out to my village. All alone.

I’m excited and nervous. Excited to finally settle in and unpack. To get started, make friends, begin to feel comfortable in my village, Téné. Nervous because I’ll be the only American/English speaker/outsider in my village, because I still don’t really speak Bambara, because I won’t have a routine and don’t really know what I’m going to do when I get there.

In fact, for the first three months at site, we’re not really supposed to do much. Rather, I will use my first three months to continue learning Bambara and get acquainted with my community. Sure, maybe I’ll weigh some babies, but I won’t start any major projects until almost February, which makes me feel like a bit of a lame duck, not to mention that I’m worried about how I’ll fill my time.

Wish me luck!

Beginnings

2009-01-13T20:27:00.000Z

My host family can’t believe that my big brother isn’t married yet. Especially an educated and successful science teacher like Johnny.

They also can’t believe I’m not married, and my sisters have taken it upon themselves to find me a husband. Their serious, number one pick is Madu, an eligible bachelor who has just finished his studies. They like to tell me how smart he is, and then bemoan the fact that he hasn’t been able to find a job since he finished university. “You can take him back to America with you,” they say brightly, as if they’ve suddenly lit upon perfect solution for everyone: Madu will be able to find a job, and I’ll have someone to look after me.

My host mother stays away from my marriage plans, but she has designs for everything else in my life. She decides what kind of water I should bathe with (fresh from the well or hot water that has been heated), and after I’ve taken my bucket bath and we’ve watched Couer au Peche (a remarkable Brazilian soap opera dubbed in French that we – and half of the village who comes to our compound to watch the show on a black and white tv run off of a car battery), we sit down to dinner together. Except the sitting is a rather elaborate process. I must sit just so (à la africaine, she calls it), with my legs at an angle I can never get quite right, my back supported, my left hand in my lap, and my right hand primed for eating.

And she really wants me to be primed for eating. Her goal is to fatten me up as much as possible – a guest who has been treated well should only leave fatter, and she constantly demands that I eat more, more, more. Even after telling her I’m full, thanking her for the food, and moving towards the sali dega to wash my hands, she’s handing me an entire fish that she demands I eat, never taking no for an answer.

I seem to be improving. The other night, she told me she was truly content: I had performed a “tour de force” on my dinner! I did feel quite proud too.

My family is Bomu, a minority ethnic group in Mali, and they’re also Christian, meaning that our family is quite small. With only 7 people in the compound and one wife, my family dwindles in comparison to neighboring compounds with four wives and over 20 people. The Bomu people are known for having pets, really caring for their pets and loving them as creatures, which is not too common in West Africa in general. We have one dog, Wilfred, and when I arrived, there were two new kittens, tiny little “bêtes” as my father called them. They wandered around meowing constantly, and one of them soon took a liking to me, and me to him. He would follow me around the compound mewing, hoping for a pat and making even a bit of my powdered milk.

One night, during the showing of Coeur au Peche, right after Octavio had been wrongly convicted of murdering his own father, there was a commotion in the street, Wilfred was barking and growling rowdily, and everyone ran out to investigate. I stayed where I was, curious as to how the evil and newly wealthy Barbara would react to Octavio’s conviction. From the street, there came cries of “Jackuma…Jackuma!!” (“Cat…Cat!!”), and my stomach did a little flip. Something had definitely transpired between Wilfred and my new friend, but I was wary to run out and see. That night, the kitten did not follow me around, and I couldn’t spot him anywhere in the compound. A few nights later I finally got up the courage to ask my family: Did Wilfred eat the kitten? Yep, he sure did.

When I’m not with my family, I’m at school, desperately hoping to learn a bit of Bambara so I can figure out what my family is saying about me. I’ll hear my name, Samouhan, mentioned in conversation over and over, but with so little grasp on Bambara, I have no idea whether I’ve made a huge cultural faux-pas, or whether my family’s just plotting when Madu should come over next to seduce me.

However, the chances of me learning what it is they’re saying about me seem slim. In comparison to the other PC villages, where trainees spend up to 7 hours in language class, I spend maybe 2 hours trying to work on my Bambara. My teachers, Oscar, Brahima, and Augusta, enjoy long breaks up to an hour or even two, taking time to make tea, and discussing the regions of Mali too much to focus on language as much as we should be. It makes for fun and slow days hanging out with the teachers, but my language skills are suffering. How am I supposed to conduct an entire meeting, lecture, or radio show about health issues in Bambara? Hopefully language lessons will quickly improve.

I received my site assignment for the next two years today. I’ll be living in a village of about 4,000 people in the region of Segou, about 50K from the city San. Whoa. It’s a lot to digest, especially when I still have so many questions. Like – will there be cold Fanta for sale? I’ll find out in about a week and a half when I head out to visit my site for a week.