Quick Update

Just a quick update to let you all know that I haven't stopped blogging intentionally! Our Internet provider is having a satellite problem and all of Peace Corps Mali has not had Internet for the last 3 weeks. I'm writing this from an Internet cafe, which is expensive and painfully slow. Although I do have new blogs to post, I finally have pictures to include and I'm not willing to post the blogs without their accompanying photos! Not yet anyway. :) I'll give it a few more weeks, and hopefully our Internet will be back up and running, Inshallah! (God willing!) Happy Halloween and an upcoming Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! To those of you in Ameriki...good luck with Snowtober. =/  Kan sooni, See you soon!

xoxo

Michelle

Rainy Season Stories Part 2

An excerpt from my blogging journal on August 19:

Today I woke up early and got my act together in a reasonable time, because Alima and I had planned to do my laundry this morning.  Usually we do it once a week or so, but somehow it’d been awhile and I had nothing clean left; I had to recycle dirty clothes to even do laundry.  I noticed the sky was dark, which is actually pretty normal in the early mornings during this time of year, but I’m learning to tell the difference between a normal morning sky and a rainy sky, and this looked like a rainy sky.  It was hard to tell though, it was changing so often – literally every few minutes – that I couldn’t really decide what it was going to do.  Either way, I was annoyed.  The gloomy weather meant even if we were able to do laundry, my clothes would dry even slower than usual.  Back during hot season it could take less than an hour for clothes to dry.  These days it can take 24+ depending on the clothing, which is frustrating with my lack of hanging space.

The rain started around 9:30 and soon was pouring down.  By 10:30 it had let up significantly and I heard a knock at my door.  During Training, I learned that Malians are afraid of the rain.  Well, that just goes to show you can’t generalize an entire population, because there was Alima knocking at my door to come do laundry.  I put on my rain jacket and slowly picked my way through the mud that was my courtyard, opened my door and said, “What the heck are you doing here? It’s raining!”  Alima was convinced this was a great time to start.  I could potentially deal with the light drizzle, but the dark clouds and still-near-sounding thunder were a dealbreaker for me.  (Interesting, since Alima isn’t particularly fond of thunder, or “Allah” as they call it).  For once I stood up for myself and said there was no way I was about to go do laundry now – we could do it soon when the storm had actually passed. 

I retreated to my house for 20 minutes or so until the worst had passed.  Rather than wait for Alima to come back again, I decided to brave the walk to her house alone.  I say “brave” for several reasons: the village can transform during a rainstorm and become quite the slippery slope, plus, for the first time, I’d have to carry 3 buckets, 2 weeks of laundry, and the soap all by myself.  Done!  I balanced the giant bucket (I can comfortaby sit in it) and clothes on my head and carried the other two buckets in my free hand.  That’s right, I’m a Malian woman now!

Alima was surprised to see me.  I swear, sometimes I think my community thinks I’m totally useless.  I’ll give it to them that I’m mostly useless when it comes to Malian-ish things, but I’m working on it!  Alima grabbed a giant bucket of her own and some clothes, took my two smaller buckets, and we headed out to the well together.  

A Rainy Season lake (NOT the one I crossed)

We skirted around the outside of the village, and as we rounded the side to the back of the village, I saw just what an hour and a half of rain had done.  The small lake (only a pit in the ground during dry season) had become a much bigger lake, and there was a river separating us from the well.  Seriously – fast-running water, an 8-inch waterfall into the lake…Allah had done some serious business.  We had no choice but to walk through the river, which luckily was only about 3 feet wide.  But then I saw our next obstacle: the entire path to the well had become its own pond.  Not a single dry patch on the way there.  Picture this: when I first came to Sourountouna, the village appeared to be completely surrounded for miles by nothing but dust, dirt, and some trees.  It was SO barren!  For the last 2 months, the scene has slowly shifted into one of green and life.  The fields have been planted, the crops are growing.  The rains made small ponds.  Now as far as I can see, for miles, everything is green.  Water is everywhere.  I wish I had “Before” and “After” pictures to show you.  It would knock your socks off. 

Now picture this: me, balancing a giant, heavy bucket on my head with one hand, using my other hand to help me balance as I wade my way through water mid-calf high, at times to my knees.  Alima and I have both tucked up our clothing (her a skirt, me pants) and I am purposely, publicly showing my knees for the first time in almost 7 months (other than the few times I’ve been in strictly American company).  Alima is in front of me, this tiny 12-year old girl, doing the same thing.  The whole way across, I’m teasing her about all the frogs and toads that must be hiding nearby, and she’s teasing me that I’m going to fall – a likely possibility at any moment in time, let alone this one!  At this point I was thanking my lack of total stupidity for earlier in the morning having finally settled on wearing the sandals that don’t break at least once a day.  Seriously, I’ve literally sewed the plastic on the other pair to help keep them from breaking.   (Give me a break, I’m a poor Peace Corps Volunteer!)  

We finally get to the other side, and Alima puts the buckets down on the “edge” of the pond.  Except there really isn’t an edge.  It’s just shallower water before it runs into the millet field.  My bucket is basically floating.  I can’t help but think how ridiculous this is – but what can I do, all of my clothes are dirty!  We decide to wash the clothes inside the fenced-in garden by the well.  The remaining path is dry but a jungle of overgrown plants.  We finally get to the well – and realize we’ve left the juru, the leather pouch used to draw water from the well, at Alima’s house.  There’s no other way; we have to go back.  So we head across the pond again.  Then the river.  This time we actually walk upstream for about 50 feet before exiting to enter the village.  Black beetles the size of peach pits are happily swimming around in the water around us.  (They might actually be bigger than that.  I don’t eat peaches so I don’t really know how big their pits are, but the only other pits I can think of are mangoes and those are way too big).  We go to Alima’s house, grab the juru, and head back into the river again.  I’m walking down the river, hoping there aren’t any worm-breeding snails chilling out in the river, because if there are I’m probably going to end up with schistosomiasis, a disease in which a worm lives in you and makes you pee blood.  Bummer.  Of course, I probably already have it from my trip to Manantali… 

This time as we cross the pond we don’t have heavy buckets on our heads and we’ve been joined by two little girls who have come along for the fun.  (Ps I saw adults working in the fields who stopped to stand up and stare at me plodding my way through the water.  I provide so much free entertainment!)  Alima put my arm around her shoulder, and the 7 year-old grabbed my other hand, and the 3 of us started across the pond together.  I’m not really sure who was holding up or pulling down whom…should I be embarrassed if a 7 year-old kept me from wiping out?  We skittered and slipped our way across together and finally made it to the well with everything we needed.

After that it was a pretty normal laundry experience.  Alima’s older half-sister came out to join us with her own laundry.  It was pretty funny listening to her shrieks as she crossed the pond.  It continued to drizzle for maybe the first hour we were out there.  It was kind of surreal being out there, doing laundry at a well, with half the sky looking completely normal and half the sky looking like the Apocalypse.  Luckily the dark and ominous side was moving away from us.

We finished in pretty record time for how much clothing there was.  Nothing, of course, had dried, so we loaded it all in the buckets to traipse back to my house and try to figure out a way to hang it all up.  This trip across the pond was much more nerve-wracking.  I again had a heavy bucket balanced on my head, but this time if I fell it wouldn’t be dirty clothes tumbling into the muddy water, but rather the clean clothes we’d just spent all those hours washing!  I was totally nervous while crossing the pond – forget my dignity, my hands were tired and it was well past lunch!  I was much slower than everyone else, but eventually I made it safely across.  And I safely forged the river and the second, smaller pond on our way back to Alima’s house and then mine.

I wore the other, crappier sandals to the CSCOM.  They broke, finally irreparably, while walking across normal ground, and I had to walk home with only one shoe.  Thank Allah for the occasional smart decision. 

*A note on ending my day.  I went to Alima’s house at 8:30pm to chat.  I wore a T-shirt covered by a long-sleeve shirt and I was cold!  When I got home, I pulled out the hooded sweatshirt that’s been in hiding since February and sat comfortably outside, wearing 3 shirts and reading my newly arrived People magazine.  It was a 74° heaven.  

I Bless the Rains Down in Africa

(That's right, I pulled out the Toto)

During my shameful lack of blogging, Rainy Season came and has almost gone again…sort of. Even I can tell it hasn’t been a very good rainy season, and this is my first time experiencing one. Rainy season is supposed to last from July-October/November-ish, and we’ve certainly had some rain, but nothing like what was described to me. It’s worrisome…this is a country where over 80% of the population are farmers.  Mali is already one of the poorest countries in the world…Number 4, I believe I recently read? I know the millet isn’t as tall as it should be. I know some crops got planted later than they should’ve been, because the rain didn’t come. I know the farmers were/are worried. The lack of rain will affect these people, my community, for a long time to come, particularly next year around this time during “Hunger Season,” when people are using up the very last of their stores before they can harvest again. It’s not good.

I have had some interesting Rainy Season experiences. For instance, planting. Like much of rural Mali, most of the people in my village are farmers. In Mali, men and women are both responsible for farming, although they have different roles. The men plow the fields, using a metal contraption called a soli that has one wheel up front and two handlebars in the back, kind of like a wheelbarrow. One person leads a team of some combination of horse, donkey, and/or cow. The animals pull the soli, and another man guides it with the two handles. The whole team plods along back and forth, back and forth to loosen up the soil.

After the field is plowed, the women can plant the seeds. Women and children are in charge of planting. Which means I got to help! Alima took me out to the fields on several different occasions. The first time we walked 40 minutes out to her dad’s field to drop off his bike (don’t ask me why; he took a donkey cart out there). Then we walked home again. An hour later, we walked the 40 minutes back to the field. Out in the fields we climbed the trees. Alima helped her dad plow a little. Then they decided it looked like rain and I had to go home. Allah forbid the toubab get wet! Despite my protests, we went home. (It didn’t rain. Weather is finicky here).

The next time, Alima and I went out alone to the millet/bean field. We walked all 40 minutes out there with Alima balancing a gourd on her head, the big gourd full of 3 smaller gourds, each with a small cloth handle and full of millet and bean seeds. Halfway there, Alima told me to wait for her as she turned off into a random field, walked to a random tree, and pulled 2 planting tools called dabas out of the branches. How she knew which field and which tree were the right ones I’ll never know! We continued walking and had almost made it to our destination when some men working in the fields called out a greeting to me. I turned around to respond to them but kept walking – and walked right into Alima’s back. She stumbled and struggled to keep the gourd on her head balanced, but in the end it toppled – and all of the seeds with it! I felt awful! Millet and beans seeds were all over the ground. We picked up as many as we could and stood up to continue on our way. Before we walked away the men greeted me again, this time chuckling behind the words. Oh, that funny toubab!

Once out at the field, Alima taught me how to plant the seeds. Step 1: take off your shoes. Whack the dirt with your daba (it looks like a hoe), drop in a few seeds, cover the dirt with your daba, step on the dirt, take a small step forward, and repeat. A lot. Because we were planting the seeds so close together, we ended up basically just remaining bent over double the whole time as we worked our way up and down the rows. After about 20 minutes Alima decided it was break time. We sat in the shade and drank some water, then continued planting for another 15 minutes or so.

At this point, Alima decided I should learn how to make tea. But we hadn’t brought any tea supplies with us. Which meant we had to walk all the way back to town, stop at my house to get some money, go to the butiki to buy tea and sugar, and go to Alima’s house to pick up the fire brazier. And then walk all the way back out to the fields. Which we did. An hour later, we were back in the millet field armed with tea supplies. Alima had carried the brazier the whole way, stopping to pick up sticks as we walked in order to keep the fire going. As Alima started making the first round of tea, her mom Djeneba and some other women and kids arrived at the field with lunch – toh, of course. Djeneba had been worried that toh wasn’t good enough for me (it is) so she’d bought and brought a loaf of bread and a can of sardines. I don’t get it, they know I don’t like fish, but apparently sardines don’t count as fish. I would’ve rather had the toh. Instead I forced down the sardines, and found them rather to my liking! At the very least, I didn’t hate them. And then I ate toh anyway. Soon after lunch (and tea) was finished, the storm clouds rolled in and the toubab had to leave. And so we once again walked all the way back to village – all that back and forth for barely 30 minutes’ worth of work! If only I could make them believe I can handle physical labor. Sigh.

Tea is made in 3 rounds and we’d only had the first out in the fields, so we went back to Alima’s house to continue making tea. I said I would stay until the rain started. We sat in Djeneba’s house with Alima’s brother Yaya and her half-sister Fakouma. It was quite fun, just the four of us laughing and joking around as the wind picked up, the sky darkened, and the thunder and lightning started. I was enjoying myself so much that even when the rain started I stayed to finish tea. I taught Alima the chorus to Shakira’s song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa). If you don’t know the song, you should, but since you don’t, the chorus goes like this:

·      Zamina mina eh eh/ Waka Waka eh eh
/ Zamina mina zangalewa/
Anawa aa/ Zamina mina eh eh/ Waka Waka eh eh
/ Zamina mina zangalewa/ This time for Africa!

It’s a Cameroonian priori language and translates more or less to

·      Come, come/ Do it, do it/ Come, come/ Who called you?/ Yes, I did/ Come, come/ Do it, do it/ Who called you?/ This time for Africa!

Obviously this is not Bambara, but apparently African languages in general are easier for Malians to pronounce than English, because Alima immediately picked up on all of it except for the last English line. That one we still occasionally review.

So I was having a great time and all, but eventually I decided I needed to go. I needed some Michelli time. Alima was getting giggly and silly and I was starting to get cabin fever. I told the kids I was going home and they looked at me like I was a crazy woman – who in their right mind would go out in that downpour?!? I played it off like it was nothing. “I’m not scared of a little rain!” (It was a lot of rain. And thunder. And lightning). They tried to get me to stay till the rain ended but I insisted on going, and so I did. As soon as I stepped out into the open I was soaked. But I had to keep going! I made it through the concession and into the street before my flip flop broke for the first time. Malian flip flops are generally pretty cheap and tend to break eventually – the middle thong part breaks through the top of the sandal and you have to push it back through. You can do this for a long time before you have to buy new flip flops, and I’d been doing it for awhile. 

My courtyard after a rainstorm

I stepped into the street (alley) and it was like walking into one of those kiddie areas at a water park. The houses lining either side of the narrow alley had drainage pipes coming out of the roofs and facing out into the street. Funny, I’d never noticed them before. But now? Now they were gushing out water like you wouldn’t believe! Between the 4 pipes and the narrow street I was doomed. It was at this point I started to think maybe I was in fact a crazy woman. But on I went! I made it to the first intersection before my flip flop broke a second time. And a third. And a fourth. By this time I was soaked, fed up, and starting to worry that the book in my bag might be getting a little damp. So I took off my flip flops and trudged home in shin-deep water, fighting currents, rain, and Allah only knows what was at the bottom of the water – I went the short way, the way we’ve been avoiding since Rainy Season started and the ɲεgεn runoff has gotten a little too rank down that street. Crazy woman indeed.

I finally made it home and wrapped up in my towel, leaving my soaked and muddy clothes outside – they certainly couldn’t get any wetter or dirtier! I sat down to read. Storms are always kind of exciting because it means everyone goes inside and we toubabs get a little bit of daytime privacy! So I was excited to continue reading my latest book, Three Cups of Tea. (Read it, it’s good!) I got about 15 minutes in when the rain stopped. Figures. It wasn’t long before the kids were knocking at my door! “Michelli? An be barokε?” (“Michelle? Can we hang out?”)