A Look At My World

I know it’s really hard for people back home to try and picture my village and my home, so I’m going to attempt to describe it. So far I haven’t had the courage to get my camera out, knowing I’ll be listening to endless demands of “Take my photo, Michelli! Can I see? Can I see?? But I have snuck a few photos here and there, and I’ve promised to “bring my camera back from San” this time, so perhaps soon I’ll have more pictures to share.

The Villages

My village is technically divided into 2 villages, the Fulani side and the Minianka side (two different ethnic groups). The main road runs right down the center of the two villages. A note on roads, there are very few national, paved roads in Mali. For example, one road goes from Bamako to San, passing through Segou. One road goes from San to Sikasso, passing through my village, Kimparana, and Kuchiala. So when you picture me living right on a main road, it’s kind of a big deal.

Sourountouna Peuhl, or “Flawere” as the locals call it, is the Fulani village. It’s on the left side of the road as I’m approaching from San, and the village itself is set back from the road about a 10 minute walk. Between the village and the road, running parallel to the road, are the school, the Mayor’s office, the sous-préfets’s office and house, and the CSCOM (health center).
Sourountouna Bambara is on the right side of the road, and the village starts right where the road ends.

To Get to My House
To get to my house, I pass the macaroni lady, Assana’s butiki, and several houses where I’m daily accosted by kids. Then I cross a small field (next to a pond during rainy season) and here I have 2 choices: I can go straight ahead or straight and off to the left. The first option is the more direct way to my house. I cross a ditch, pass a well, pass the old lady who always gives me lots of blessings, pass a few more houses, pass a big open space and Ousseman’s butiki, and then turn left. A short distance ahead I pass my jatigi’s (host “dad”) house on the left, and then run straight into my house.

If I take the other route, I cross the ditch at another spot, walk under the mango trees, pass the papaya garden, and walk around the edge of the pond. Then I enter the narrow, twisty streets, more like alleys, that make up the majority of Sourountouna Bambara. I twist through several turns and eventually end up walking straight into my jatigi’s compound (Safi and Sali's houses are to my left, completing the circle the 4 compounds form), where I’m accosted by the whole family. Here I stop to greet everyone, toss around the kids, and maybe drink some tea or tell a few bean-eater jokes to my jatigi’s wife, the only Coulibaly in the family. Then a quick succession of left, right, and left again takes me “across the dirt” and about 20 feet right into my house!

Walking into my jatigi's compound.

My House

My house is special, as I’ve mentioned, because my compound is completely surrounded by tall, non-crumbling walls, and I have a door with a lock on it. Entering through my concession door you walk into the far right corner of a small courtyard – small by Malian giant-family standards, but large and spacious by living-alone PCVs! The courtyard is surrounded by mud brick walls on 3 sides, and my house runs the length of the 4th side, straight ahead. My ɲεgεn is its own little “room” off to the right. To the left is my beautiful, wonderful Neem tree, the pride and joy of my house. I was heartbroken in May when someone came to trim the branches and butchered my poor tree, but now that it’s rainy season I understand why: the branches have already grown an incredible amount since May, and because of rainstorms I’ve had 5 large branches (I’m talking 15 feet long and full of smaller branches) break off. One landed on my wall, another on my roof, and the other 3 in various weird angles into my yard and in front of my ɲεgεn. The kids or my jatigi always come and take the branches away for me. Anyway, my beautiful tree provides shade to the majority of my courtyard most of the time.

To the far left, adjacent to Sali’s house, is where I spend the majority of my time. My brusse (“bush”) lounge chair sits in the shade under the lowest tree branches, and next to it is my concrete platform where I sleep and sometimes hang out during the day, and at night with the kids.

The door to my house is on the far left, next to my concrete ledge. Walking in my house you enter my “kitchen.” Here I keep my table, and on it my water filter, stove, dishes, food, and anything else related to cooking/eating. I also keep in here my bike, my buckets, my mats, and a small table with all sorts of books, PC manuals, and general crap on it. This room is fairly light as it has both the door and a window, although they’re both on the same wall and face into the shady courtyard, so it’s not ever very light inside.





The door to my second room, my bedroom, is on the right. (There’s also an adorable little window between the two rooms). My bedroom has my bed, my trunk, my suitcases, my clothes, and my over-the-door shoe rack where I keep all my toiletries. This room has one window, which also faces into the courtyard, so it’s almost always quite dark and doesn’t get much air circulation either. A few months ago I tried to paint the room bright yellow to lighten it up a bit. The paint I bought failed miserably on the wall material, so I painted the wooden door instead. Someday I’ll try to fix the walls!










As far as landscape goes, all of the streets and open areas are dirt. The village “streets” are more appropriately called paths, and are twisty and turny in the manner of what my language tutor called an “ancient” village. In some places you actually have to walk through a family’s concession in order to continue along your way. Most concessions either have one or more sides that are completely unwalled or parts of walls that are crumbling. If nothing else, each concession has a large “door” area that allows for easy viewing into the concession. (See why mine is so different?) Wells occur every so often throughout the village and are usually surrounded by giant puddles of water. Some have a protective tire or clay barrier around the edge to prevent things like animals and children from falling into them.

During dry season it’s all dirt and dust with trees in some concessions and out in the fields. During rainy season, the village is still pretty much all dirt, but the open areas and fields, and areas surrounding the wells are green with grass, bushes, and crops. Small gardens are placed throughout the village and on the outskirts and occasionally in the fields. The smallest ones are mud-brick lined rectangles with lots of leftover millet and corn stalks piled on top to prevent the animals from eating the plants. The village tree gardens (bananas, papayas, oranges) are usually attached to people’s concessions and are little mini-forests. The bigger veggie gardens are usually surrounded by a fence of tree branch posts with thorns in between, to deter the animals.

The fields undergo complete transformation between seasons. During dry season you’d have no idea that these are the “fields.” (I certainly didn’t!) During rainy season, you can see that the “fields” are any open space. For instance, the head doctor has peanut fields that run right up to the CSCOM walls. The fields become a beautiful landscape of green, spotted by brown dirt when the plants are still short enough to see through. Villagers plant millet, field corn, millet, peanuts, millet, sorghum, millet, rice, millet, and cotton. The fields extend for miles! More on the fields later, but I’ll walk 30-40 minutes away from town, always through fields, to get to my homologue’s husband’s fields, and there are still more fields as far as I can see in every direction.