What's This All About

I'm starting to have a routine and sometimes I actually know what is going on. So I thought I would try and summarize what I do.
My day starts with the morning call to prayer. Usually I sleep though this 4 a.m. wake up call. I am a little confused why the call to prayer for an event that takes places at sunrise (approximately 6:30 a.m.) happens so far in advance. But I have learned to be OK with a lot of things that confuse me, and this is a minor one. After a breakfast of bread from the bakery a block from my house, I head to 'work'.
Work involves me sitting in what we would consider an empty office; a desk, a table, two chairs, a mostly empty bookcase. Sometimes people stop in; fun when I'm the only one there. I can tell my language skills have improved at least a little. Now I usually know what people are asking for, and can sometimes even point them in the right direction. A month and half ago I just smiled and looked at them really confused (because I was really confused). Oh, I forgot to mention, this is the public works office/city hall. The marriage ceremonies are a fun. A lot of my time is spent just hanging out. Usually Amadou is there, and we have great discussions; about politics, pollution, the price of rice, religion, geography, disease, polygamy, all sorts of things. It is great French practice for me. He is incredibly patient because our discussions always involve a dictionary, and sometimes drawing pictures, or acting things out. We have to draw fewer pictures now to understand each other, but I still have to look up a lot of words. Occasionally my dealer stops in, no not drugs, plantains. I have a serious addiction and she knows it. She shows up with a tray full at least once a week.
After a few hours of this 'work', I head to my host family's house for lunch. Lunch is rice and sauce eaten out of a common bowl. My host mom makes a great tega dega na (peanut butter sauce). The bowl sits on the floor in the middle of the room and we all sit around it eating with our hands. I get the one chair; everyone else sits on stools, tomato cans or the bed. My host family is a-typical because men and women eat out of the same bowl. After lunch we watch some television. The Belle-Mere (The Mother-in-Law), was a great Brazilian or Mexican soap opera dubbed in French. It was incredibly cheesy, and fantastically bad. At the end of the show when things were getting exciting I think there were over 20 of us packed in an 8'x12' room with wall to wall furniture. This leaves about 4'x8' to pack 20 some people into, very efficient and adds to the air of excitement.
After this action packed 30 minutes of television, I drink some tea. Tea drinking and making is a national pass time in Mali. The tea is made super strong, incredibly sweet, and sometimes with mint (my personal favorite). It is served in a shot glass, and has been poured back and forth between the tea pot and glass until it has a cappuccino like foam on top. It is standard to drink two glasses of tea, the second glass being the second brewing. This second glass is less strong, therefore less bitter, and I think better. My host dad calls it Malian whiskey, and I like Malian whiskey.
Around 3 or 4 p.m I make my way to my house. The walk home includes some form of being mobbed by children (from mild to so serious I might have to hit you, or at least act like it). My walk also involves a lot of greeting. Sounds easy enough right, hello, goodbye. No, it is an exchange that takes several minutes. Hello involves how's your family, how did you sleep, how are your friends (if they actually know your friends you might go thru them one by one), how's everyone in your town (really)? Goodbye is along the lines of why are you leaving so soon, tell your family hello, tell your friends hello. There might be questions in the middle of hello and goodbye. These cover what is your name, where are you from, where is your husband, do you have kids, would you like something to eat. And then there are blessings, they are fun. May Alah grant you what ever you want and/or may Alah remove what ever is wrong. This makes walking down the street a little time consuming, but never boring. I do this in Bambaran with a little French thrown in, but this can also go on in Peuhl or a few other less common languages. I'll work on Peuhl next (maybe), I'm still trying to get the Bambaran down.

Pictures and the Name Ninja

I think I have figured out a better way to post pictures; one that doesn't involve secret handshakes, long e-mail chains, or having to mortgage my kidney. Please let me know if this doesn't work. And if you didn't get the giant e-mail with the secret handshake code that lets you access my homestay pictures, please let me know that too.

http://picasaweb.google.com/home?tab=mq

I'm going to go with the whole 'a pictures worth a thousand words' thing and not write much.

The climbing porn pictures are to taunt all the climbers I know and hopefully sucker a few of them into visiting. I didn't take those pictures and haven't been there yet.

The Bandiagara b-day was a night of tubob (white person) fun with a bunch of Peace Corps people and some local aid workers. We had great food (kabobs, fries, salad and cake), good drinks, and bad dancing.

Swear in is when I took the oath and became an offical volunteer. The pictures shows what great clothes you can get made here. There is one picture in this group that does require a little back story. If your are bored with my rambling at this point just check out the pictures. If not, keep reading and I will explain what a name ninja is.

The Name Ninja

During training I lived in a town with a population of about 7,000 Malians and 8 Peace Corps trainees. The children here find us tubobs to be a bit of a spectical so there is shouting, crowding around and handshaking when they see you. Mark, a fellow trainee, lived as far away from the school as you can get and still be in the same town. He got to meet a lot of kids on his way to and from school every day. One girl did not have the standard reaction to him. Instead of jumping and shouting, she would come tiptoeing up, crouched like a cat buggler, with a finger to her lips like she had just shhhed you, (the pictures explains it better than I can) and in a whisper ask, "comment t'appelle tu?" ('what's your name') If Mark crouched down to meet her, she would get nose to nose with him. If he backed up, she backed up. If he moved forward, she moved forward. Never breaking eye contact of course. How do I know this you may ask yourself. Well by week 6 of our 8 weeks in this town, Mark could get her to follow him across town and into school, in the crouched position. They would then go around and ask all of us are names. And that is how I got to know Iassata Djarra, a.k.a. the Name Ninja.

Velo

I have a bike, finally. Our bikes were caught in customs, I guess, but mine arrived at my door Wednesday evening. A total surprise, brand new, shiny and....pink?!? I've never had a new fancy bike, and this is a nice Trek bike. But it is a girl's bike, a concept I don't really understand. Maybe after biking in a skirt I'll appreciate a "girl's" bike, I'll get back to you on that. Why pink, is my real question? Well, it is more white with pink and grey highlights. I'm already fairly noticeable as one of the few white people around, add in a white bike and a white helmet, and I look completely ridiculous. There is always a fair amount of staring, and surprise when I say hello in Bambaran from the people on the street. Now I have taken ridiculous to a whole new level. Today I couldn't help but laugh at how silly I must look, and I noticed I wasn't the only one laughing. I did convince Rabayah, the other PCV here with me, that we should use our new pink bikes to go the 12 K to the bank and better internet. I had to bribe her with my homemade ginger lime-aid, but it worked. Don't get me wrong, I love Mali public transport. Normally for this journey we would take a bashee. This involves packing 18 or so people (not counting kids sitting on laps) on benches in the back of a truck; get a push start; belch a lot of smoke; probably stop for gas, only enough for the trip; and trying to pay the 275 CFA somewhere in the middle of the trip when we are packed in so tight no one can reach there own pockets, and of course no one has exact change. So as much fun as that is, I decided we should try out or new pink bikes.
As is everything here, our trip was an adventure. It started with a herd of cows in the road, we let them have the right of way. In the middle of the trip we stopped for a lime-aid break, and I was, well, um, sort of in Rabayah's way when she got off the bike and well, she sort of fell down the shoulder of the road..but just a little. I fell horrible, but she was laughing as she rolled in slow motion, down the hill. Luckily she wasn't hurt, but the chain did come off her bike. While I was trying to put it back on two nice guys, both named Ibrahim, stopped and helped us. Hopefully I haven't scarred her for life so that she won't ever want to bike again. Here she is showing of her war wounds.

Maybe: the Bougs - But no

So I have had to try a different method for picture sharing . I sent out a giant email that will hopefully let you look at the ablum from my time at homestay. Now I will be looking for a different way to share pictures. In the mean time I give shutterfly an F-.

Broken Dreams

So my African dream has been crushed and I'm totally ok with it. Training is almost over and soon I will hopefully be a real true Peace Corps Volunteer. I know where I will be living and sort of what I will be doing. I told everyone when I left to come visit me in my mud hut in Mali, hopefully I was going to have chickens and maybe even goats. Well, sadly, no not sadly that is not to be. My site is a city of about 100,000 people. I have a second story apartment with 6, yes, 6 rooms, and the best part, I have a shower and a toliet, that flushes! After only 7 weeks of pooping down a hole and taking bucket baths in the open air. I am excited about having a bathroom. I am close to dogon country, in fact my host family is dogon. The boat trips to Timbuktu leave from here, there is climbing about 5 hours away, a very famous mosque 2 hours away. This city, which is remaining nameless at the recomendation of the Peace Corps blog watchers, is a tourist destination, and all Mali has to offer is close. So start planning those trips now! As a side note, it is a 10-12 hours bus ride from Bamako, but not bad really. And some people might be bothered by the grand mosque that is a block away and the call to prayer at 5 in the morning, but I sleep right thru it. The ceiling fan, yes I have 2 ceiling fans drown out all other noise. So while my fellow volunteers have their walls disolve in the night during a rain storm; have a spitting cobra in the rafters; or have to endure 56° C. (all those are true by the way) I will be either in the shower or sitting in my livingroom under a fan. I will actually work too, well hopefully my French won't prevent me from getting something done. I am working with the city on trash disposal and sewer improvements. There are a lot of aid agencies in town so maybe I can work my way into some side projects and get to meet a lot of people in the process. I've never been so happy to be disappointed!

Learning is Hard

I'm in training now. I eat enough carbs to be training for a marathon (rice, potatoes, bread, and more rice). But I'm in training to make a sentence. One day it will happen. I live with a great family. Luckily they speak some English. It usually takes a mix of French, Bambara and by the end English for me to get a thought out. These people are saints! The new game show for Peace Corps trainees; 'Are You Smarter Than a 2 Yr Old?' I lose at this game pretty much everyday. La is one of the little girls in the family and has to correct me on what time of day it is pretty often. She is also teaching me the parts of the face. Eating with my hands also adds to me feeling like a kid. Yes, the 3 year old is better at this than I am. I'm blaming it partly on the fact that I have to be right handed. The left hand is for hmm, let's say the other end. Enough of that. Training is mostly language classes. We did get to make concrete cinder blocks in our technical training. Later that day the functioning US ambassador came to talk to us. (Mali is between ambassadors right now, the second in command has taken over.) So I made cinder blocks in a linen dress; love it!

Travel with Bill Murray

Traveling is always such an adventure. I was suppose to leave MT on July 6 to reach Philly for staging that started the afternoon of the 7th. Seems easy enough, but nooo. There was some mechanical problem with the engine, OK so maybe that is important. Anyway I arrived in Philly the evening of the 7th, just in time for the last 10 minutes of training. Everybody knows me know. "Oh yeah, your the girl that came late."
After much training, group activities and a lot of flip chart paper. We all loaded on to buses and were driven to New York City. We spent about 5 hours in the airport. I didn't really count, but it was a long time. We were waiting to get on the plane and Bill Murray walks down the terminal and get on our plane. I'm sure it is a sign! I'm just not sure what kind of sign it is. So after a lovely flight to Paris with Bill (were close now, ha.) We spend another 5 or so hours in the airport. The flight to Bamako, Mali was great. The sahara was visable out the window, that's a lot of sand. I have nothing profound to say, I'll blame jet lag and a lot of training sessions. The plane we were on had this cool camera feature so we could see the run way lights on our video screen as we landed. All 77 of the Peace Corps trainees burst into appause the instant we touched down. I think we were all a little excited to be I Africa, and maybe even more excited to be done traveling.
Now I am here at the Peace Corps training center in Bamako. We are three to a mud hut. Last night a few of us walked down to the river to look for hippos, no luck. It is hot, but not unbearable. We were woke up in the middle of the night by a lot of rain. It's a little loud on the metal roof. Gotta go back to class.
Bonjour.

T-Minus

Everything is packed except this computer and my futon mattress which is now my bed. The storage unit is the best game of tetras I have ever played. Unpacking it is going to be a nightmare, but I'll worry about that in two years. After all of my waiting for a Peace Corps assignment the last month or so has flown by a little too fast. I apologize now to the people I didn't get to see. The going away party was amazing, and I'm still surprised that the cops didn't get called. Now there will be a few days of backpacking for one last dose of snow, mountains, and friends. Then off to Montana to see the family. I leave there on July 6 for 'staging' in Philadelphia. After I have been properly 'staged' all of us Peace Corps volunteers will leave for Bamako on the 9th. Yikes, I'm moving to Africa, Timbuktu, literally. I hope training is not as hard as I have heard it is. And I hope I learn all the French I was suppose to know before I left, and then some. Hopefully I'll be able to post a few stories here, and lots of pictures. I'm a better photographer than I am a writer.