Welcome Back!

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been at site for nearly 7 weeks now! Sometimes the time seems to crawl by, but mostly it flies. To speak honestly of my experience up till now, it’s been tough. The beginning was really hard – hard enough to make me constantly think about throwing in the towel and coming home. But I really do want to be here, and I’m determined to make it work. Besides, I keet telling myself I can’t come home until I finish the requirements for my Master’s, because otherwise I’d have to go back to school and I am NOT doing that!! So here I am. :)

A brief summary of my struggles:
1. Language.
Oh my, the language. It’s so overwhelming! I was doing really well with language before I came to site. You’d think here I would be forced to get better, and I hope someday that turns out to be true. But for right now, it is a daily struggle to get through basic communication. First of all, Minianka is most people’s first language here, and therefore the one they tend to speak with each other in village. I’ve finally reached a point where I can tell when they’re speaking Miniaka instead of Bambara, but that doesn’t get me anywhere.

Furthermore, Bambara isn’t really an “academic” language. When kids go to school in Mali they learn French. Bambara is learned at home – often as a second language – so unless someone goes way high up in education – university-level – which an obscenely small number of Malians do – Bambara isn’t learned as a written language. In fact, there was no written language for Bambara until the 1970s. Because of all these reasons, Bambara has developed differently in different areas of Mali. I told my friend, who also lives in the area, that I feel like a foreigner who had learned basic English with the “standard American accent” and then been sent to live in the Deep South. She took it a step farther and said she felt like we were living in the Louisiana Bayou – so at least I’m not alone in my struggles! And as my PC supervisor reminded me, it’s this way for all PCVs. Bambara is different everywhere, so we all have to just suck it up and deal with it and learn to live with it. Which I’m trying to do. I’m a lot better now at communicating with the people I see everyday, which is encouraging. I still can’t get much past greetings with anyone else, but hey, it’s progress.

2. Privacy
This is such a cultural-based problem! As an American adult (stop laughing, Aunt Mel!) I am accustomed to privacy – lots of it. Even though I lived in a large dorm for my 5 years at BU, for the last 2 years I lived alone in my little room. I could put my headphones in while taking the bus to class. At the library I went into cubicles and cocooned myself away for hours on end. As much as I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, I’m a person who really likes and needs my alone time.

Mali and Malians are very, very different. Village life is extremely communal. Families are large and often extended. Unless it’s raining, life is happening outside. Virtually nothing happens inside. You know the expression “It takes a village to raise a child”? That had to have come out of Africa. I swear, I’m raising kids here! Kids come and go as they please in and out of anyone’s home, including – and especially! - mine. It’s not unusual for me to wander over to my host family’s house and be followed by 10 kids who then plant themselves all over my family’s courtyard, furniture, and occasionally laps. To which no one bats an eye.

And speaking of homes and courtyards, they are also very public. Virtually no one has an enclosed, private home. I’m the only one in village with walls on 4 sides that are higher than a person’s head. I’m the only one with a door to my compound, and on top of that, the door locks. If I don’t lock it, even if it’s closed, at any point during the day or night, someone will inevitably walk on in, usually within 5 minutes of it being unlocked. So while yes, I have things to help ensure my privacy, these things make me different, and that makes people curious. Which means they come over. And if they can’t get in, they knock till I let them in. Which makes napping hard. =/

The kids were especially difficult at first. The adults are busy with their own lives, but the kids literally have nothing to do except go check out the new attraction in town – the white girl. I’ve had to train the kids not to climb my walls, not to walk into my house when I’m sleeping, not to bug the crap out of me by climbing their own walls and yelling into my compound, and not to knock on my door at 6:30 in the morning or 10:00 at night. It’s an ongoing process, and we’re still working on it. I’ve found bribery to be a great tool, but more on that later.

So in summary, it’s hard to get alone time, which most Americans really do need.

3. Self-Sufficiency
That whole privacy thing I just talked about, I didn’t mention that I’m pretty sure I’m also the only person in the whole village who lives alone. People just don’t do that here. The way Malians think, why on earth would anyone want to live alone? Like I said, life is communal and public. Privacy is not much of a concept here, and therefore neither is living alone.

My homologue (Djeneba), bless her heart, decided to save me from such an awful fate by sending her 10-year old daughter (or 12, depending on what day you ask) to live with me. Now, I love kids. But this was not an ideal situation for me. It sounds like I’d be baby-sitting, right? Well, not really. It occasionally felt like that, but most of the time it felt like I was the one being baby-sat. Alima (Djeneba’s daughter) did everything for me. Djeneba cooked my dinner every night which Alima and I would eat. Alima would heat up the leftovers in the morning for breakfast, and make tea. She’d sweep the courtyard. She’d get everything ready for the day – all starting an hour before I wanted to wake up, and all about 5 feet from my head. After breakfast, Alima would get my bathwater for me. She or Djeneba would walk me to the health center. One of them would walk me home in the afternoon, and Alima would immediately be back at my house to entertain me and take care of everything for me. And at night, she’d lay her mat a foot from my bug hut and sleep next to me – in between me and the door, you know, to protect me in case any bad guys scaled the wall, I suppose. Basically I was under 24-hour a day supervision. It got to the point where I started taking my keys out of the door after I unlocked it, just so I could be the one to relock the door later. I had to have something to do all by myself!

The major problem here was just a different way of thinking. If nothing else, a BA in Anthropology taught me how to think differently. That’s all well and good in the classroom, but in real life, in circumstances like these, it’s hard to remember that not everyone thinks alike! To make matters more difficult, I didn’t know if this was a temporary arrangement to ease me into life here, or if it was meant to be permanent – and I didn’t have the language skills to ask. I was also really wary of somehow causing offense – after all, I’m going to be living here for the next 2 years, and Djeneba is my main counterpart!

After 8 days of increasing frustration and unhappiness, I had to get some peace. Thankfully, I was due for a trip into San to get some groceries so I could start cooking for myself (a step toward independence). As luck would have it, the bank was closed for Easter Monday (let me take this moment to remind you 95% of the country is Muslim and most of the rest are Animist) and I was forced to spend the night in San so I could go to the bank the next day, then go to market to buy my food. It was a much-needed break, and I also got the chance to talk over my situation with some veteran PCVs.

I came away from San feeling more peaceful, and with a better understanding of the Malian point of view. I’m the first PCV to ever be in my site, so as new as this whole experience is for me, it’s new for all of the Malians as well. That’s a lot of pressure for them! Everyone, but especially Djeneba was doing their best to do everything possible to make me feel as comfortable as possible – she even gave up having her 10-year old daughter at home to be with me. That’s pretty awesome. I mean, it drove me nuts, but it’s the thought that counts, and that was a lot of thought!

In Peace Corps we talk a lot about opportunities for cultural exchange. This was one of those. I could share American culture with my community by explaining that not only do Americans often live alone, but we like it. I really wanted to live alone! They may not understand it, just as I don’t understand everything about Malian culture, but they respect it. As a friend explained, it’s ok to tell my community what I want and need. I’m meeting them more than halfway on most cultural things, and they’ll be willing to make some adjustments for my comfort as well.

And I can now say that I am happily living alone – a huge step forward for me! So there are days where I can totally see myself living here for 2 years, and days when I can’t imagine making it till the end of the day. Often both feelings happen in the same day. Luckily, the good is starting to outweigh the bad, and I am confident that it’ll be uphill from here.