I made it through my first 2 weeks of homestay!! This is definitely cause for celebration. I have lots of stories and experiences to share, so I’ll get through as many as I can before we leave again. I figure the best way to start is to describe my family and a day in my life in the village!
I’m living in a small village called Mountougula, about an hour car trip from our training center. My friend Ashley says it’s like Cheers: everyone knows your name! It’s true, news spreads there like wildfire. I think I in particular stand out because I wear my big purple sunhat everywhere, so often I’ll be walking somewhere and from way across the field someone will yell, Damadje!!! Oh yeah, Damadje Doumbia is my Malian name. I’m named after a deceased grandmother who had very light skin. :)
My host family is great. At first I had no idea who was in my family, or who lived in my concession, or who anyone was. It was all very complicated. It took me a good week and a half, and 4 sit-downs with a family member to figure out who all lives in my concession and how they are related. First of all, a concession is a living space with individual room-buildings that open into a courtyard. So in entering my courtyard from the street, there are maybe 7 or more small buildings that each have one door that goes to the courtyard. Including me, 20 people live in my concession (and that’s on the smaller scale!) My dad, Sirafa, is head of the concession. He has one wife, Bintu, and they have two children: Lemin (11) and Ma (3). My dad has 2 brothers who live in the concession: Madu and Moussa. Madu is 33 and his wife is Badini. Their kids are Sumaylia (4) and Mama (7 months). Bintu’s younger brother Salif (12), and Awa, who is Sirafa, Madu, and Moussa’s mom, live on Madu’s side of the concession. The youngest brother is Moussa, and my main sidekick. He’s only 15 and for the first 3 days I thought he was my brother, so normally I just call him my brother. He speaks French and is learning English in school, so between the 3 languages, we can usually understand each other enough to get by. Also in my concession live the family of my dad’s cousin Siriki. Siriki and Setu have 3 kids: Papis (6), Barbere (5), and Le (2). Siriki’s mom Mamine lives with them, and Setu also looks after her younger sister, Sata, and an adopted daughter, Bi. And that’s everyone!
It’s not so complicated when you’re living there. Sirafa’s family and Madu’s family are extremely close, and in fact, in the Malian culture both men will say they have 4 children each, including each other’s children in their count. Siriki’s family stays to themselves a bit more, although all of the kids play with each other all the time. Basically if someone is younger than me and unmarried, I call them my younger brother/sister. It’s easier that way!
Like I said, I spend most of my time and eat most of my meals with Moussa. I start to feel lost when I’m home and Moussa isn’t there. He knows everything about me that you can get possibly know from my photo album: he knows I’m from Sandusky, Ohio and he can pick it out on a map. He knows my sister’s name and age and that she lives in New York. He knows my parents’ names and can point out their respective houses on a map of Sandusky. He’s so smart! He also knows my vocabulary and language skills pretty well so we’re able to keep up somewhat of a conversation together.
I really like spending “alone” time with Salif. (You’re never, ever alone until you go in the latrine or into your room and shut the door. Kids are always surrounding you, but if they’re younger, I can talk to Salif alone). He’s quiet, so he’s normally overshadowed by Moussa or other older kids. But he’s extremely patient with me, and more than everyone else he understands that I need people to speak slowly to me. He’s also one of the only people who actively corrects my grammar. If I say something wrong, Salif says it the correct way (slowly!) and has me repeat it until I say it right. So although I don’t spend much alone time with him, I really value it when I do.
Sumayila is my other favorite. When I first arrived, all of the other kids were shy and backed off, but Sumayila sat on the ground outside of my door and just howled with laughter. And he hasn’t stopped! That boy laughs all day long, and not even always at me. He sounds like a little baby doll, and he is just ridiculously adorable. He’s definitely my comic relief, and seeing him can make my day get a lot brighter. One of the first “extra” Bambara words I asked to learn was the word for “funny guy” so I can call Sumayila a “yεrεmɔgoɔ.” He’s always covered in dirt, as he literally rolls around on the ground all day. He’s definitely his father’s son in both looks and personality!
Le plays peek-a-boo with me from afar, but runs away when I try to approach, and will occasionally cry. Mama pretty much always cries when she sees me, which everyone thinks is really funny, and I think is really cruel since I can’t even hold the only actual baby in my family!
Regarding the adults, I’m closer to my aunt and uncle than to my parents. My dad intimidates me. Not because that’s his personality, but because I know he’s the head of the concession and because I want to make him proud of me. He’s not as charismatic as Madu, so talking to him doesn’t come as naturally. But we sit together while he makes tea (it's a special tea that the men spend a lot of time making a drinking several times a day) and I can tell he’s really proud of me when I remember how to say something correctly. My goal has become to get to a point where I can hold a conversation with my dad. My mom had a death in her side of the family so she was gone for a week, which is why I’m not as close with her. She took her kids with her, so again, that’s why I’m not as close with them. While she was gone my aunt took care of everything around the concession, so I spent a lot of time with that part of the family. My uncle Madu is super charismatic and he likes to talk to me, so he'll sit down with me and since I don't understand much he gets really animated and uses lot of hand gestures. He told me he was going to cry when I was leaving for the training center for a few days! :) He also has told me several times that I'm learning Bambara quickly, and I really appreciate his encouragement, especially when I'm feeling down and frustrated. I think my aunt Badini is close in age to me, and although she’s usually really busy, she’ll often come hang out with me and my brothers at night. Siriki and Setu I rarely ever interact with. In fact, I’d been living there for almost a week and knew that Siriki existed but I’d never met him. I finally asked Moussa why I’d never seen him and Moussa took me over right away to introduce us. I’m still not sure why I hadn’t met him, but at least now I now who they are! As for the grandmothers, Mamine comes around every now and then and takes pleasure in greeting me since I can do the whole process properly. Awa seems to think that I should be able to understand everything she says and seems confused when I get confused, but she’s really sweet and last time she went to Bamako she brought me back popcorn and cookies. :)
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