Journey to Sourountouna

I’ve made it safely back from my site visit! Let me tell you, Malian public transportation is no picnic. Thank goodness I was lucky enough to have Bambara-speakers guide me both ways.

Sunday morning I left the Training Center with my homologue, the two other girls from my stage placed in the San region, and their 2 homologues. We left at 6:30am but I can’t complain – I’d much rather leave early than spend the entire heat of the day on a public bus. (Which I did anyway, but it’s not always like that). The bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30, and it left at 8 which was pretty good. Our bags were loaded below, the bikes were strapped to the top of the bus, and we were off.

Imagine an American charter bus without a toilet in the back, and looking like it’s 40 years old and badly in disrepair. That is a Malian bus. There are holes where the overhead lights and air conditioner vents should be, but sadly, holes are all they are. A few tiny windows open near the ceiling in the back of the bus, and we had 3 roof vents that were open; so despite the 100+ degree weather and a bus crammed full of people, the heat was tolerable as long as we were moving. But when we stopped moving, that’s when you felt like you had suddenly dropped down to Hell. And unfortunately, we stopped a lot. I have no idea why. I think sometimes it was at checkpoints and sometimes it was to let a few men off for a pit stop on the side of the road (sorry, ladies) but lots of the time I didn’t have a clue why we’d stopped. Stops lasted anywhere from 1 minute to 20+ minutes. I basically slept the whole way to San, but every time we made a stop, I immediately woke up from the heat. Oh, and from the men, women, and kids bombarding the bus to hawk their wares. That may be my absolute least favorite part about Mali so far. The heat here is oppressive but tolerable; the bus hawkers are not. The moment we stopped, people would flood the bus and start yelling out their goods and prices. Bus riders could buy anything from peanuts to water to rice sifters. (Lord only knows why you would want a rice sifter on a public bus). Then arms and faces and veggies and sifters get shoved in your face since the woman selling them can’t get past the seller in front of her but absolutely has to give her product to the dude behind you. So you sit there pressed up against your seat mate, cringing at the noise and smelling sweaty people all around you and then cringing again when you realize you smell exactly the same. Finally, praise God, the bus starts to move again, and all the sellers have to hurry up and finish their sales so they can hop off of the moving bus before it starts going too fast. And don’t forget that in the midst of all this, the woman are balancing giant trays on hands and heads. It’s all quite overwhelming.

So like I said, I slept almost the whole way. Did I mention it was 8 hours? We made one 10 minute pit stop in the city of Segou halfway between Bamako and San. I t might seem like 1 bathroom stop on an 8 hour trip is a problem, but remember I sweated out at least 15x the amount of water I consumed, so it really wasn’t a problem at all. My homologue, bless her heart, bought me a cold soda in Segou which revived me for about 12 minutes. I think she thought something was wrong with me, since I couldn’t stay awake long enough to even try to formulate a Bambara sentence or 2. It’s the age-old problem with me: keeping conscious. Plus, my feet had swelled up to about twice their normal size and my sandals were cutting into them. I had cankles up the wazoo. I also had slightly less swollen legs and knees. Not to mention I was drenched in my own sweat. It was not a pretty picture.

We went on this way for another 4 hours. Along the way we dropped off both of my friends and their homologues. It was a little bit hard to see them exit the bus, and realize that for the first time, I was completely alone with Malians. Not that I have a problem being alone with Malians, but the lack of any English at all for the next few days was daunting. We finally made it to the “city” of San (my friend John had earlier described San to me as a truck stop) around 4pm. I loaded up with my two backpacks and the 2 of us walked about 5 minutes to the next bus stop (aka people sitting outside in front of a butiki) where we waited for just a few minutes. The guy across from me gave me a bag of peanuts which was really nice of him. Our next bus was ready to depart pretty quickly, so again we loaded up for the 20 minute drive.

Or so I thought. First we stopped for gas. Then we stopped for who knows what. Then, 15 minutes down the road, we stopped again. Almost everyone, including my homologue, got off the bus to chill at the side of the road. I had no idea what was going on (I didn’t understand her explanation) but I couldn’t leave my bags and they were too awkward to transfer in and out of the bus again. Besides, we’d never stopped for more than 20 minutes. Until this time. After 10 minutes I pulled out a book. After 30 minutes I started to get restless. After 45 minutes I started to worry, not only about why we were stopped, but also about my diminishing water supply. We finally got moving again after more than an hour. I still have no idea why we had stopped. Potentially for prayer? But I didn’t see anyone praying… So after that obnoxious hour-long stop (thank goodness it was late in the afternoon and not so hot, although I was annoyed we wasted my favorite part of the day sitting on the side of the road) we drove for another 5 – yes, FIVE – minutes before we reached my town, Sourountouna!

My homologue, Djeneba, took me straight to the Sous-Prefect, a government employee appointed to his position, which is basically to supervise the goings-on of a specific area. He’s fat and jolly and speaks a little bit of English and was very welcoming, but I was exhausted and hot and confused and probably not very entertaining. Thankfully we didn’t stay there long before we hiked back across the road, past the butiki, over the ditch, past another butiki, around some windy paths, and finally to my new house for the next 2 years.

Joined along our walk by a few men and an entourage of kids, we entered the courtyard where they opened the door for me and proudly showed me my new home. It’s a cute little house, built of mud (and cow poop) with 2 rooms. I have my own courtyard which is largely filled by a beautiful Neem tree. My ɲεgεn is brand new and very clean and a wall surrounds my compound. There’s a window in each room of the house, which, since covered by screen and metal shutters, don’t let in a whole lot of light, but that’s ok. After showing me around, the rest of the night was a blur of awkwardness as I went to another house and my homologue left me with a woman I didn’t know (I know her now and Djeneba had gone to get me water, but I didn’t realize that at the time), panicked as I used my iodine water purification tablets and didn’t realize the water was supposed to turn yellow, sat around my courtyard awkwardly for a long amount of time with the Sous-Prefect (I was just too tired to even try for much conversation!) both before and after dinner, and finally went inside to go to bed.

At this point I was tired, barely clean (I’ll explain later), still dehydrated, overwhelmed, and feeling kind of lonely. Then I walked into my house and noticed a roach skittering across the floor. I managed to kill it, then decided to check for any more intruders. Glory be, in my second room there were two! I started to freak out, and when I moved the door I noticed a big, Phinneas-style spider on the door. I killed one of the roaches but the other escaped into the plastic covering my ceiling. Then my flashlight swung around and there was another spider. And another. And another roach. It felt like a horror movie. I was already stretched to my mental limits and now each time my tiny flashlight beam hit a new spot on the wall, another 1 or 2 or 5 creepy crawlies were illuminated. I counted 28 spiders and 13 roaches in the two rooms and stopped counting to flee the house. Good thing I had already decided I would be sleeping outside!

I set up my bug hut in the dark and crawled inside. It was a beautiful night. I was lying there, ready for sleep, when I was hit with a crushing thought. Earlier, when I had the yellow-water crisis, I wanted to call the PC doctor to make sure it was ok to drink but realized I had no cell service at all on either of my carriers. (I drank the water anyway. It was fine. Later it occurred to me that iodine probably turns clear water yellow). But now as I was lying there in my bug hut, I realized no cell service means no regular contact with my parents, who have each been calling me several times a week, and no texting my mom when I’m feeling down. I’ve been texting my mom for 4 years and I’ve always talked regularly with my parents. That was kind of the last straw for me that night, and it just about killed me to think I was losing that communication with my best support system. I was too exhausted even to cry about it - all I could do was wait for sleep and a new day.

I was just about asleep when Djeneba came back, unexpectedly, with a mat. She handed me a fan, laid her mat next to my tent, and slept next to me all night on the hard ground. She didn’t do that any other night I was there, but I think that first night she realized I could use some company. It’s amazing how much communication can happen without words, without intention, between an African mom and a lonely American girl a million miles from home.



I have to stop here with my blogs for a few weeks because it’s late and I’m exhausted! But let me just reassure you all that despite a tough first night, sleep and water and a new day made a huge improvement, and I had a really good stay in my new site, with a lot of promise for the next 2 years. I’ll be posting more about my site when I return to the Training Center in 2 weeks…training is almost finished, and in 3 weeks I’ll be swearing in!! I’m looking forward to the next stage in this process, and I can’t wait to tell you more about it!