Another thing that doesn't fit my narrative...

(do yourself a favor and read the previous post if you haven't already). After the dugutigi died, his oldest son was unceremoniously selected as the new village chief (he knew he was going to inherit the position soon enough). The new dugutigi has two twin girls. One day, I jokingly asked him which one was older. His response was interesting and I was surprised he even had a serious answer to begin with.

He definitively considered the girl who had exited the womb first to be younger than the one who came out second. This was contrary to the answer I was expecting. I mean, clearly the one who "entered the world first" should be considered the oldest, right? His explanation was that, in the womb, the older child gave deference to the younger one, allowing the younger twin to exit first as a matter of courtesy.

This anecdote struck me as interesting, especially since both theories are equally ridiculous! Infants who have never seen the light of day have no notion of courtesy. Likewise, what temporal difference is there between the inside and the outside of the uterus? The first relies on a customary logic while the other is grounded in the arbitrary notion of an apparent beginning. These are both, of course, not serious postulations concerning the proper age of the child, especially since Malians rarely keep track of their own ages and never celebrate birthdays. But it does seem to provide a little (naive) insight into the ways that each culture filled the ambiguous logical void left in the wake of my initial question. There's no veritable answer and yet it seems both cultures have collectively formulated a playful explanation with respect to their own unique priorities and assumptions.

N bora so, n nana so

I'm nearing the end of my first three months at site; a time when the question "What the hell am I doing here?!" tends to peak in volume and intensity. Africa has been exceptionally kind to me. I haven't suffered any life-threatening illnesses, the locals offer me nothing short of devoted friendship, the food is tolerable (though I'll never eat squirrel again), and my Bambara shows signs of improvement. I even found a local store that gets regular shipments of expired Snickers bars. But I don't mean to imply that there aren't frustrations. Indeed, I devote a lot of energy to being pissed off. Language barriers, limited contact with home, almost no privacy and a never-ending supply of unusual encounters are all reliable sources of frustration that, collectively, move the simplest tasks and the most surmountable obstacles into the realm of near impossibility. Most of all, I miss my friends and family. It's difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that, even in my absence, time in America continues. I was shocked to realize that the lives of my friends and family continue to move along their normal (though never predictable) trajectory--even when I'm not there as a witness. Marriages, birthdays, graduations, celebrations and tragedies happening in America are now, for me, distant events that I can only experience through descriptive reproductions in e-mails (keep them coming) and phone calls (I could always use more of those). This thought and the excessive amount of free time I have to reflect on my own loneliness, boredom and disillusionment makes the almost unthinkable prospect of going home even more attractive.

Still, I think I'm in this for the long run. There are highs and lows to being a Peace Corps volunteer but they have a tendency to "level out" as time goes on. I've developed a strange habit of categorically declaring my days "good" or "bad" around 2:30pm everyday; a near-arbitrary assessment that is inevitably reversed by 8:00pm. On decidedly good days, I feel free, the world is rich with possibility and I'm convinced I could stay for a third year. On bad days I feel like an accomplice in my own capture, ready to charter a West-bound luxury cruise across the Atlantic. However, it seems like, as I get acclimated to my new surroundings and my role here begins to take shape, while the highs aren't quite as high, the lows aren't nearly as low.

Back in August (wow, it's been awhile since I've updated this thing) I moved to my site in Kalibene. Installation was a little rough. I was, of course, last on the list to be installed and by the time my luggage was removed from the top of the truck, it was already pitch dark and raining. The circumstances were particularly irritating because my installation occurred during Ramadan and I had to work with a handful of impatient Malians who were itching to break their fast. Almost everything I owned was heavy with rainwater. My bike and bed frame (handmade with bamboo and cowhide!) made it out okay but my clothes and my mattress (basically an oversized sponge) required a few days in the sun. I'm happy with my new house. It's, essentially, a two-room version of my old house, only slightly larger. Kalibene has never hosted a volunteer so the house was built only a few months ago. The mud brick walls are freshly set and the wooden crossbeams aren't termite-ridden. I have my own latrine and bathing area and there's a small shed-like structure apart from the rest of the house, which will eventually be my kitchen. My total living living space is enclosed within a four-foot wall. Since goats and chickens seem to have no problem getting over the wall, I suspect it was constructed to prevent more annoying pests, like children and donkeys, from pressing their noses against my screen door or rooting through my trashcan. Getting my house set-up was a slow process made even slower by the fact that I hardly spend any time inside of it. Part of the reason is the heat: Malians build their houses out of the same materials they use to make their ovens. However, for the past few months, I've spent a lot of time getting to know everyone in my community, shaking hands with local leaders, town mayors and village chiefs. I'm often introduced by my homologue, Luckman Sangare, who is an extremely well-connected individual in the area.

A few weeks ago I started my baseline survey. I've been busy visiting families and asking questions about their sanitation practices and their water sources. I'm not even halfway finished with the survey but I already have a good idea about what Kalibene needs; namely, latrines. Kalibene is a village of 800 people and I've only been able to find about seven latrines (two of which are collapsed). To put it plainly, my job for the next year is to 1) find out where people are shitting, 2) find out why they're shitting there and 3) teach them how to build latrines they can shit in.

In my second year I have to do something about the distribution of drinking water in my village. Kalibene has two working pumps (one has been broken since March and the locals don't have money for a repair) but since everyone lives so far apart, many people have to walk about two kilometers to get water while others only have to walk 100 meters. But I probably won't be building a new pump. Building a new pump is difficult and expensive and, unlike most villages, the houses in Kalibene are widely separated by farmland. Even if I had $10,000, regardless of where the new pump is installed, only a handful of people would be helped since all of the households are located so far apart from one another.

I certainly have a lot of work to do. I'll think I'll talk more about my work in a later post when I'm a little more certain about my role in the community.

About a month ago my dugutigi (village chief) died at age 80. The day before, I visited the old man and offered some blessings. I entered his small hut and the heat was stifling. The chief lay naked with a sheet covering his torso as his two sons fanned him off with old newspapers. The man was a complete skeleton and I was told he hadn't eaten anything in days. The scene was strangely symbolic. A small cluster of bats was hanging directly over the dugutigi's bed though no one, except me, seemed to notice. The air was thick with the specter of death and it was undeniable that the end was near. It was sobering and tragic to see such an old man die, especially one who knew so much about the history of Kalibene and Mali in general. There's a proverb here that says, "Seeing an old person die is like watching a library burn to the ground."

After easing a brief, village-wide panic incited by some confusion over exactly who had died (the dugutigi and I share the same name), I rode my bike to the funeral. Bikes and motorcycles filled the chief's concession. Everyone from Kalibene and hundreds of people from neighboring villages came to pay their respects. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits (funerals here are more like celebrations than somber occasions) and the chief's wife was the only one who seemed to carry a fixed expression of solemn resignation. My homologue and I approached the body which was protected from the sun by a makeshift tent made out of white sheets. The local Imam washed the body, carefully scrubbing the limp arms and legs with a religious vigor. The chief looked much as he did the day before.

I was allowed to the see the body and the hole it was to be placed in but I wasn't allowed to see the burial itself. I was told it would have been too crowded, which is true, but I suspect there were other religious reasons barring my presence. Every man in the village marched down a narrow pathway to the grave site. The chief's body was wrapped in a white linen sheet and carried overhead on a thin wooden stretcher made earlier that day.

While the men buried the body, the women made massive amounts of rice and peanut sauce. Two cows, three goats and a few chickens were slaughtered that morning so there was plenty of food to go around. When the men came back, I realized just how much of a sanitation nightmare this event was turning out to be. My Peace Corps training as a water and sanitation volunteer has made me extra sensitive to instances of poor sanitation but this situation was disgusting by any standard. While I made a point of washing my hands before eating, I was forced to eat out of the same bowl with three men who had just buried a dead guy (they merely cleansed their grimy fingers with a slash of water). Also, after eating, I mindlessly accepted a dried fig from the Imam (I felt culturally obligated to eat it at the time). In addition to the fact that I shouldn't be eating unpeelable fruit without first soaking it in bleach water, I had eaten a fig handed to me by the Imam who, moments before, was scrubbing the dugutigi's corpse. I, of course, only considered this after the fig was fully digested. This seemed to go beyond a mere transfer of bacteria. My body had thouroughly absorbed the residues of death among other things.

The entire ordeal was rarely accompanied by even an ounce of sadness. Since the dugutigi was so old, everyone probably saw his death coming. Indeed, after we ate and the praying was over, people hung around to chat, drink tea and tell jokes. I've never attended a funeral before but this event wasn't at all similar to my idea of what a funeral should be. People were in such a good mood that stories and jokes about the deceased seemed to be without sensible limits. I introduced myself to a man who I've never seen before. I told him my name was Seydou Berthe (the same name as the dugutigi). The man's eyes widened and he laughed as he turned to the crowd of people drinking tea. "Look everyone!" he said. "Seydou isn't dead, he just turned into a white guy!" Everyone laughed hysterically and I, not knowing what could possibly be considered inappropriate at this point, smiled nervously and slinked away.

Aw bismillah

Alright. I realize this is all way overdue and probably a little lame but I want to make an honest attempt at “blogging”. This post is just to get everyone up to speed since I’ve been here a month and I haven’t really told anyone anything yet.

Also, as a supplement to the disclaimer at the top of this site, it’s important to note that the following description (flowery and tasteless as it is) isn’t all that accurate; not for lack of effort but because few words can describe just how strange and wonderful this place is. If you want to find out what I mean, send me your mailing address.

7/2/10

The airport was quiet and either side of the terminal was sparsely populated with jet-lagged passengers waiting for their connection to arrive. Each of us probably made somewhat of a spectacle, whimsically spending the last of our $140 allowance on all the modern niceties we would soon live without: “my last cheeseburger”, “my last issue of the New York Times”, “my last premium coffee”, “my last cold beer?” I even found myself craving a variety of indulgences that I’ve never been in the habit of consuming: “Coca-Cola!” “McDonalds!” “Cigarettes!” This hedonistic compulsion continued and actually evolved to include increasingly novel items, particularly when we made a brief layover in Paris: “I can’t believe this is going to be my last Choux à la Crème!”

(As it turns out, with the exception of McDonalds, you can find all of that stuff here if you look hard enough. Also, as a former French colony, Mali has no shortage of Choux à la Crème).

7/3/10

Upon exiting the plane, I got my first breath of moist African climate as it clashed with the cold, sterile air inside the cabin. It was dark and a number of uniformed men hastily directed the foreign passengers onto a large bus waiting at the bottom of the mobile staircase. The airport employees wasted no time in confusing me and every other American now tightly packed inside the retired commuter bus. For reasons that no one has been able to explain, our trip amounted to nothing more than an immediate U-turn across an adjacent gravel pathway, a cumbersome journey that took no less than five seconds. We were immediately shuffled off the bus and into the baggage claim area where a mob of over 300 people crowded around a single conveyor belt that was only capable of producing one piece of luggage every five minutes.

We were then loaded onto another bus which took us to Tubaniso, an agricultural research center donated to the Peace Corps by the Malian government. The staff showed us our rooms (a series of brick huts with thatched roofs and, surprisingly, electricity) and introduced us to the latrines (fascinating facilities that, perhaps, deserve their own post at a later date). That first night seemed to carry on forever and those sleepless hours in the sky started to catch up to me. The last thing I remember from that evening was waking up in the middle of the night to pee. The latrine wasn’t far from my hut but the path was dark and the only available light came from a small florescent bulb attached to a distant tree. I kept my eyes fixated on the ground and moved quietly. Pouring through countless outdoor survival guides did nothing but establish the illusion that deadly exotic insects were conspiring against me, lurking underneath my every footstep. But the ground was barely visible and, in the obscure glow of that single light bulb, I could only make out the silhouettes of fist-sized rocks dotting the pathway. As I strode closer to the latrine, the rocks started moving. I walked faster and they started jumping. I ran. I ran so fast that I almost failed to notice that those gravity defying rocks weren’t rocks at all—they were frogs. I ran faster. What followed was an energetic chain reaction of leaping reptiles, a collective panic (myself included) inspired by the frantic pounding of my own footsteps.

7/8/10

The first week of training ended quickly. After a lot of “cross-cultural training”, maybe two technical sessions and an hour-long sprinkle of language tutoring, a convoy of white land cruisers were arranged to take us to our respective homestay sites. Equipped with a 100-word description of my site and the limited capacity to say “hello”, “goodbye” and “I feel sick” in Bambara, I went off to Kabe with seven other volunteers.

Out of the ten or fifteen homestay sites selected by Peace Corps, Kabe was, by far, the least accessible. About 60k outside of Bamako, we turned off the main road and traversed a 7 kilometer stretch of mud and dirt. I’ll spare some details here but the roads are pretty horrible in Mali (especially during rainy season). I can now appreciate the reasons why Peace Corps spent so much extra money to equip their vehicles with enormous treaded tires and exhaust snorkels.

When we arrived in the village, all 800 residents were waiting near the entrance to welcome us. As our bags were being unloaded, the village elders greeted us. Luckily the deafening drum and xylophone arrangement was enough to drown out the clarity of my words, allowing the locals to conveniently infer intelligible phrases—even when there weren’t any. The dense mob consumed our vehicle and we were totally enveloped in a blur of clapping hands, dancing legs and wide eyes. I could see my backpack and guitar case floating over a sea of outstretched arms. My luggage sank abruptly before becoming objects of a frenzied competition. Eventually, an eager few won the dubious privilege of carrying my shit.

The celebration continued with a series of dances (performed almost exclusively by Kabe’s new guests) and an exchange of translated greetings and benedictions. Our group offered the Dugutigi (village chief) ten cola nuts and the village gave us two live roosters (tomorrow’s lunch). We were introduced to our host families and quickly sent off to our new homes.

My new home is located at the far Northern edge of Kabe, nestled between two expansive fields of sprouting millet. My house was built using an unusual blend of local resources and modern utilitarian design (no doubt mandated by Peace Corps specifications). The walls are made out of creped, mud brick and the floor is a cracking slab of concrete. It is a near-perfect cube except for the top, which is covered by a slanting sheet of corrugated aluminum. The door is made out of rotting wood and other materials that were probably left over after the roof was finished.
I was impressed and also a little disappointed. I think I would have preferred to have a round hut with a thatched roof just like everyone else. Also, as if I had to be even more of an exception, my house was the only structure equipped with a lock; mine happened to be an oversized deadbolt made in the good old USA.

After my belongings were secured inside my “hut”, I sat in the concession with my new family. A note on what I mean when I say “my family”: The entire Samake clan lives together in a tight cluster of huts and my present company grew to include my host father, his two wives, their children and a vast array of grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins—at least eighty people who are all related in one way or another (I’ve been living there for over a month now and I’m still confused about their tangled family tree).

The children gathered around my chair, competing for a glimpse at their new, remarkably pale toy. My host father was sitting next to me and a cozy six inches of moist air separated our faces, which, by now, were both twisted in mutual curiosity. Everyone spoke quickly and all at once. They were trying to tell me something. They kept repeating what sounded like the English word “self” but every other word seemed to bounce off my stupefied expression and fall lifelessly to the ground.
Then, a stern whisper sliced through the unintelligible noise, opening a space for one brief moment of clarity: “You are Salifou Samake.” It was my Malian name, bestowed on me minutes earlier by the Dugutigi (I guess I just wasn’t paying attention). Given the context, English was the last thing I could have expected to hear. Things became even more bizarre when I discovered the source of the utterance. It was a thirteen year old boy with, apparently, a very elementary understanding of my native tongue. It was only after I said, “You speak English?”, that I realized just how elementary his understanding was. Panicked, he responded, blurting out the extent of his vocabulary in a rehearsed, monotone voice: “Hello-fine-thanks-how-are-you-no-thanks-I-don’t-like-fights-I-have-a-lot-of-shopping-to-do”.

So far, homestay has been wildly productive both linguistically (total immersion is super effective) and culturally (total immersion is endlessly frustrating). The days are filled with highly structured language sessions as well as quality time with my family. Quite a bit has happened since that inaugural day in Kabe but the details are sketchy and because, at the time, I had almost no frame of reference that would have allowed me to comprehend those first few weeks, I’m not even going to attempt an exhaustive description (i.e. my journal entries dated between July 9th and August 3rd are a series of overexcited, semi-intelligible ink splashes). I can, however, report clearly on the present.

A week ago I visited my permanent site; my home for the next two years. Starting in mid-September, I will live in a remote village that dangles about 100 kilometers below the city of Sikasso, making me the Southern-most volunteer in Mali, just a bike ride away from the Ivory Coast.

There. Now you’re all pretty much up to speed. I think in the future I will have more opportunities to update my blog but you’re not likely to see a day-by-day account of my daily life here (that would be boring). Instead I will try to write thematically about my work, the people, food, wildlife, transportation, language, humiliations, victories, tea, weddings, magical trees, taboos, music, nyegans, gardening, strange encounters, the value of water, hospitality, livestock etc. The only things I’m not allowed to talk about (as per my contract) are politics and other volunteers (see my “supplement to the disclaimer at the top of this site”).

Also, please ask questions. I’ll be happy to entertain ANY curiosities (it’s also a good way to see if anyone is actually reading).

Farewell First World

I wish I could think of something clever or important to say in my inaugural blog post but I don't really have time for anything fancy. I only have a day and a half to pack for this two-year ordeal and so far I can't say I'm anywhere close to being prepared--as far as luggage goes at least. Mentally, I'm already there. And if I could only keep my illusions straight, I wouldn't bring anything but my guitar and a toothbrush. Unfortunately, as the reality of this ordeal draws near, I'm starting to appreciate my (normally undisturbed) attachment to my laptop, ipod, clean clothes and brand-name soaps.

Anyway, this post is, hopefully, the first of many. I'm still not sure how much access I'll have to the internet or electricity so it's entirely possible that this whole blog endeavor will flop in a couple weeks. If that's the case, I'll just have to rely on hand-written letters (which, for me, isn't really a devastating compromise).

I also want to thank my friends and family for supporting me. I don't think I would have made it this far if it weren't for all the encouragement and understanding. It's nice to leave home without any regrets, except for the fact that I'm probably missing one hell of a family reunion.