The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love...Part 1

It’s quite simple: life here is hard.  Living in a place where no one understands you (literally) is really, really hard. Learning Bambara is hard. Peace Corps’ new slogan is “Life is calling you. How far will you go?” But for a long time it was “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love.”  Lots of RPCVs (Retuned Peace Corps Volunteers) wish that was still the slogan, because it really is very true.  This job/life is not easy.  It’s frustrating and depressing and sometimes you can get really really down.  And on top of the normal challenges, our training group of 64 is now down to 62.  Two people have already gone home for medical reasons.  Whether each of us were close to them or not, part of our little family is missing now, and it’s disheartening to hear that kind of news.

I mentioned in another post how tired I get everyday.  I’m used to having an insanely busy life, with every moment scheduled, and falling into bed at the end of the day, passing out in 1 or 2 minutes.  This is a different kind of exhaustion.  It’s utterly draining.  In Mountougula I do have a schedule, but I also have tons of unscheduled time, so the pace is a lot easier than what I’m used to.  Not to mention it’s Africa, so the pace is a lot easier just by the very nature of life here.  Even with all of that down time, I’m constantly battling to understand and to be understood.  To make sense of the culture.  To eat another mouthful of toh while dreaming of cereal and milk and cheesy pizza.  All of that combined with the heat, and it just knocks the energy out of you and I fall asleep early almost every night.  At some point I’d like to stay up to see what happens on a regular night after 9pm.  There’s always so much noise and music and laughter – I want to be a part of it!

Language lessons are the most stressful part of my life right now.  I studied Spanish for 6 years, and while I’ve retained a lot of the vocabulary, I never really learned to speak it or understand when other people were speaking to me.  My biggest problem was I was embarrassed to speak, so I rarely ever did.  That was not a good way to try and learn a new language.  With this in mind I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to speak Bambara, but I’m still finding myself with the same problem: I have a large vocabulary, but I’m not very good at using it.

To start, American students very rarely learn English grammar.  Sure, we learn when to use “well” vs. “good” and that sort of thing.  But to be honest, I think I’ve learned more about English grammar from my Spanish classes than from my English classes.  So when my Bambara teacher is explaining that this is “in the passive voice” or that is “passé compose” I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, which just makes the lesson that much more frustrating. 

French is Mali’s national language, so many Malians also speak French in addition to their Malian language.  For instance, even my barely-literate uncle speaks fluent Bambara and French.  Because of this, many Malians speak what we call “Frambara,” kind of like “Spanglish.”  It’s mostly Bambara but a lot of words come from French, or French words are just randomly thrown into the conversation.  I, however, speak no French.  I mean, I can say hello and ask you how are you are tell you my name and that the restaurant is on St. Jacques St.  But that’s not very helpful.  Even more frustrating, a lot of the Malians in my community expect me to speak French since I’m white.  I actually know much more Bambara than French, so it gets me even more frustrated when they revert to French to explain something I didn’t understand in Bambara – that’s not helpful!!!  I suppose in some ways you could say it’s good I don’t know French – I won’t be using it as a crutch as I struggle to learn Bambara.  But that’s looking really, really hard for the silver lining.  Life would be way easier if I knew French.  Which I don’t.

Sometimes I get really frustrated in my language classes when we’re presented with yet another exception to the rule, or we learn yet another word that has not 1, not 2, but 3 or 4 different meanings depending on the context.  The sentence structure is not the same as English (or Spanish for that matter), so I have to get used to that, but then sometimes that changes, too.  One day I was so frustrated with something that I just couldn’t focus anymore.  My LCF realized I needed a break, so he started talking about how difficult it was for him to learn English.  He said, “The first time I heard the expression ‘My car is running out of gas’ I just couldn’t understand!”  I started laughing, and it actually really made me feel better!  It’s true, English has tons of crazy expressions like that, and at least in Bambara letters always make the same sounds.

It’s the little things like that that often get us through the day.  Like my multicolor pedicure and taking care of my feet every night.  Or funny things that happen at home.  Sometimes I tell Moussa English words in exchange for Bambara words for a certain object.  For awhile, we were working on body parts.  I was trying to explain to him the connection between the words “ring,” “earring,” and “toe ring.”  Which meant I also taught him the words “ear” and “toe.”  And then for good measure, we learned “neck” and “necklace.”  The next night we were sitting out at the butiki under the tree, surrounded by other kids, and Moussa and I started quizzing each other on the words we’d learned.  For some reason Malians really have trouble pronouncing the word “toe,” which I’ll never understand, considering that we eat “toh” every day!  So “toe” was Moussa’s tricky word, and although he correctly said “earring” and “ring,” he was stumped when I pointed to my toe ring.  He thought for a while and finally guessed, “Neck ring?”  I started cracking up, and all the other kids around me started laughing too until all of us (including Moussa) were howling with laughter.  Malians love to joke so there really isn’t any embarrassment for a mistake like that.  And again, that little mistake made me feel better!  So every day I try to find the little things to make me feel better.  And believe it or not, hanging out with my Malian family always makes me feel better, even though it’s then that I’m in the midst of confusion and misunderstanding.  They’re so good to me, and I know they really want to help and to talk to me.  It’s a good incentive for me to keep trying, so that I can talk to them, too.  And I always remind myself, you’ve only been here for 2 weeks!  Crazy, right?