An excerpt from my blogging journal:
Saturday, August 20
Today was the first day of another polio vaccination campaign,
so it was another early morning for me.
Djeneba, Madu (a health center relais,
or community liaison), and I were out by 8am, walking from concession to
concession to vaccinate all the kids under the age of 5. The process itself
gets pretty boring but I enjoy going out into the village and surrounding
villages, and seeing lots of people.
Now that I’ve been here for 4 months and recognize a lot of faces, I
take the opportunity to have Djeneba remind me of their names since I’ll now have
a chance at remembering. We worked
until noon; at that point Djeneba told me (as she always does) to go to the
CSCOM to eat and rest while she and Madu finish the rounds.
Back at the CSCOM I hung out with the head doctor’s wife,
Cisse, and the kids. Fanta and I
ate together since everyone else is fasting for Ramadan. After lunch Fanta (who is 4 years old)
cleaned up everything and noticed I was tired, so she took me into the house,
got me a pillow, and ordered me to take a nap – I happily obliged! After my nap we were hanging out under
the gwa (wood and millet/corn stalk
sheltered area) until all of a sudden rain started pouring down. We all ran to get everything under a
less permeable cover and then got ourselves onto the house porch under the
awning. I carried Fanta over and
set her down; suddenly her head whipped up and caught me smack in the
chin. I hit the ground on my knees
in pain as my mouth filled with blood.
Usually when the Toubab gets hurt people freak out; luckily these people
have spent so much time around me that I’m more or less a normal person and
they didn’t go ballistic. Binke grabbed my water bottle so I could wash my
mouth out and Cisse got me some cotton to help stop the bleeding in my lip where
my tooth had gone through. I
couldn’t believe how much it hurt!
Poor Fanta looked horrified, so I tried to smile at her and tell her I
was fine. After the bleeding
stopped (my lip was already swelling) I settled into a chair and waited with
everyone else for the pounding rain to stop. I looked at Cisse and she told me Fanta, who had her back to
me, was crying, so I picked her up and sat her on my lap until she settled
down. It didn’t surprise me that
she wasn’t hurt; this is the girl who once head-butted me (her head against
mine) twice just for fun…not so much
fun for me!
Later that night I needed to go to the main road to buy bread
but I was waiting for Alima to come over, as she usually does every evening to
get me water from the pump, so we could go together. She never came, and as the sky grew darker with approaching
rain clouds, I eventually had to go by myself. Not a big deal, except that the
afternoon storm had created new streams, including one that completely cut me
off from the main road. It was a
very narrow stream, but the place where I normally ride my bike through a small
ditch was going to be impossible to cross, and I had to carry my bike over
it. I had no idea how I was going
to get back again once the bike was loaded with my heavy water container.
I stopped at my favorite macaroni lady’s place by the side of
the road (she cooks food there and sells it) and gave her daughter some money
to buy me bread if the bread-seller-on-a-bicycle came while I was at the
pump. Fanta and Fatim helped me
fill my jerry can, but the new pump takes forever
and I was growing more and more anxious every moment with the approaching rain
and darkness. Finally I made it
back to the macaroni lady only to find the bread guy hadn’t come yet. (He rides
his moto to San to bring back bread, so you have to try and catch him at the
right moment before he jets off to another village). Since the rain had started
and it was almost dark, the macaroni lady told me to go home and send one of my
jatigi’s (host family) kids back
later to pick up the bread that she would buy and save for me…really, there are
just some things you gotta love about Mali! The men sitting there instructed me to go home a different
way than I’d come; I would still have to cross the stream but I would be able
to ride through it. That part
worked out ok, but the other side was a mess of sloppy mud, and I had to get
off my bike to push my way through, hurrying as much as possible to get home
while I could still see a little.
At home I struggled to get my heavy water container off my
bike and into the house, get the bike in the house without tracking mud everywhere, and find a place to store my
giant lounge chair in the house (out of the rain). At this point it was almost totally dark and I was really
regretting not having my headlamp, which I’d forgotten in San. I finally finished and headed over to
my jatigi’s house to ask one of the
Sinalis to come with me to pick up my bread. Shina, Seydou, and I headed out together. With it raining, water everywhere, plus the animal poop that
couldn’t be swept out of the road earlier because of the rain, finding our way
was difficult. My second-best
flashlight had inexplicably stopped working that morning. My fourth-best flashlight is an
electricity powered one I bought in Bamako and after 5 months of using it the
electricity only powers it for all of about a day anymore. So we were using my third-best
flashlight, which was giving off a pretty weak light with only 4-day-old
batteries.
After turning back once to find a better way across the
stream/pond, the three of us finally made it to the macaroni lady, who had my
bread ready and waiting. We turned
right back around, now in complete darkness, to go home again. It was like picking our way through an
obstacle course in the dark with only the faintest light. I needed to make one more stop at the
butiki to buy phone credit, so I dragged the boys along with me. I wanted to buy them (and me!) a treat
for helping me, so I asked the street-food lady at the butiki if she was
selling my favorite fried dough.
She wasn’t, but my usual fried-dough lady was selling it from her house
next door. We went there, only to
realize I was out of change and she didn’t have any. So we traipsed back
to the butiki to get change, then back again to buy the fried dough. When we finally made it home, an hour
after I’d originally left to get water and bread, I gave the boys enough fried
dough for their whole family and headed home…to start dinner. I made
eggplant dip to go on my bread, and I got to use my new Malian mortar and
pestle – fun!! I’d just finished
cooking when Safi knocked on my door, bringing over a plate of macaroni…two
dinners! I decided to take full
advantage of having a night all to myself and used precious computer battery to
watch an episode of Friends while I ate my two dinners… sometimes
life is really good. :)
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