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.