“Where there is no Home Depot…”

Coming back to Tubaniso (TSO) the first time for 2 ½ days was so exciting – we all couldn’t wait to go!  We didn’t leave our village for TSO until 3pm, and I just so happened to have the most awkward morning of my stay earlier in the day.  The night before, I was on the phone with my dad when this stupid cricket started cricket-ing right outside of my door and wouldn’t stop.  It kept going and going and I was really getting annoyed, so several times I stomped over to my door to open it and potentially scare away the cricket.  It never worked, but the second time I tried to scare it, I opened my door and the top of the doorframe started to come away from the wall – not good!  There wasn’t much I could do about it at 11pm so I ignored it, locked my screen door, and went to bed.

Next thing I knew, Andrew came to pick me up for church (we’d gone to a Malian Christian church the week before) and I forgot to set my alarm and was still in bed, half-asleep.  I mumbled a response and by the time I stood up and covered my knees (in order to avoid Malian scandal) Andrew was gone.  But as I opened the door to talk to him, not knowing he was gone, the entire top 7/8ths of my door and the doorframe toppled over into the courtyard.  My mom and grandma ran over to help me catch it as I grabbed at it from the inside.  Since I hadn’t washed my face yet I couldn’t talk to them and they couldn’t talk to me, so I had to resort to making a lot of horrified and confused faces.  They helped me set the frame back into the hole and motioned that I should continue on with my morning bath, so I did. 

When I finished, I headed back to my room and I needed to close the main door so I could change, so I tried to push the door back into place.  It immediately started to fall again, and this time my dad ran over to help me catch it.  He motioned that I should hold it in place, so I awkwardly pushed up the door with one hand while clutching my bucket and holding up my pagne around me with the other.  At this point my face was washed, so I was allowed to talk; however, my language classes just haven’t covered how to say, “Holy crap!  My door fell off the wall!!  What do I do?!?”  My dad instructed me to hold it up while he jetted off and came back with a machete.  So now I was standing there, still holding my pagne in place, while my dad macheted the rest of the doorframe off of the wall.  He finished and set the whole door+frame against the wall, said a lot of Bambara in my direction, and took off.  I didn’t have much of a choice what to do next so I went in my room, hung another pagne over the screen door for some privacy, and got ready for the day. 

I just assumed that my dad was taking care of the problem, but several hours later he comes back with none other than 3 of the other PCTs.  They don’t understand anymore Bambara than I do, and our LCFs have already gone for the weekend, so we’re all kind of just confused what to do next.  I think maybe all the Malians were asking me what I was going to do and I was just nodding and smiling back at them.  Luckily Hannah got on the phone and made some calls to Peace Corps personnel who promised that my door would be fixed before I left at 3pm.  Crazily enough, it actually did get fixed on time!  Jasmin’s dad really helped me out; he came over and looked at it and then translated to me that the mason would be coming after lunch, which he did.  The mason was just cementing the last bit of door into place when I had to leave to catch my transport.  The whole time I was at Tubaniso my fingers were crossed that my door would still be standing when I got back – and it was!  No more problems, I’m glad to say!