Monday, November 14, 2011
Update on My Kids
I was finally able to add some photos to the blog about my kids! Make sure to check it out. :)
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Rainy Season Stories Part 4: Planting
Planting
More on planting. My second “hands-on lesson” was in planting
peanuts. Again, Alima and I went out to the peanut field, just the two of us.
This time we tied pieces of cloth around our waists and put the peanuts in the
cloth. Peanut planting is great because the nuts are the seeds, so you get to
snack as you work! Planting peanuts is similar to planting millet and beans:
shoes off, whack the dirt with a club, drop in one peanut, cover the peanut
with dirt, stomp on it, move forward a few inches, repeat. A lot.
We actually did a good amount of work in the field that day.
We planted for awhile, took a break, and then Djeneba and a few other women
came out with the toh for lunch and to help us plant some more after lunch.
Back while it was still just Alima and me, she started singing a song I’d heard
her sing before while counting the number of bracelets I wear. I asked her to
teach it me, so while we went up and down the rows she taught me the words.
It’s a counting song much like Amεriki counting songs: it starts with the
number one, a few rhyming lines, then moves on to the number 2, etc. I didn’t
understand most of the words, but I was able to pick up on the whole song, and
with a little practice I had it memorized and we sang together while planting.
The lyrics for number 5 were tricky and I had to practice them more than the
rest – it was something about the dugutigi (village chief). For some
reason, everytime I sang this line Alima would gasp and tease me, “The dugutigi
is going to hit you!” Of course I had no idea what she was talking about so I
just teased her back by singing it louder and more often. We continued working
and planted a whole field before heading home for the day.
Back at home, I went over to my jatigi’s (host family)
house to chat for awhile. Alima came over after awhile and told me to share my
new song with the family. I did, but when I got to that line about number 5, my
host dad started cracking up! I didn’t understand. Alima said again that the dugutigi
was going to hit me, and my dad joined in with the joke. Whatever was so funny
was made even funnier by the obvious fact that I had no idea what it meant. A
bit later my neighbor, the head women’s doctor, came over as well, and of
course I was instructed to sing for her. She also started laughing, and
eventually she and my host dad were both practically doubled over in tears,
they were laughing so hard! I gave up on trying to understand and let them have
their fun, but I did refuse to go over to the dugutigi’s house to sing
for him! (Although Alima promised me he couldn’t possibly hit me, as his leg
had been bothering him and he was using a crutch to walk, and therefore would
not be able to catch me).
Later in my house I decided to
see if I could find out what the lyrics meant. Chrissy didn’t know when I
texted her, but I dug out my old-fashioned print Bambara-English lexicon and
looked up anything that might be close to what I’d learned by ear. As I’d heard
it, the lyrics were Durru, dugutigi bele kili ba. After some search, I
discovered in my lexicon the word kilibara: testicles. And bele
is a form of saying “big.” Which means I’d been going around singing about the dugutigi’s
big balls. Crap.
Since no one would tell me what the lyrics meant, I decided
not to let on that I knew now. Instead, everytime anyone brings it up, I shake
my finger at them and say “Amiɲε! N ma famu, n’ga n b’a don k’o amiɲε!” “Bad!
I don’t know what it means, but I know it’s bad!” They just crack up and tell
me again to sing it. And that the dugutigi is going to hit me.
A few days after I learned the song, I was at the CSCOM
(health center) when the head doctor sent his kids to the fields surrounding
the CSCOM to plant peanuts. Since I had new skills, I decided to join in. These
fields parallel the main road between the two villages, so a lot of people pass
by them as they go back and forth. Which means a lot of people saw me planting
peanuts. I must’ve really made their day! People would stop walking, talking,
and biking to stand in the road and watch me plant. “Michelli! I be se ka
dannike?!” “Wow, Michelle, you can plant?!?” (Remember, we state the
obvious here). I should really have my own TV show in Mali…apparently I’m
entertaining enough!
Anyway, the women’s doctor came out to watch – and started
telling everyone about my new song. And of course they all wanted to
hear! What could I do? Well, no way did I sing for them! Instead I told
everyone she was lying and that I had no idea what she was talking about –
which made them laugh all the harder. There’s just no winning!
They still bring it up. Alima and I walk through village and
she’ll start to sing the song, and when we get to number five, I change the
lyrics to mean, “Alima is BAD!” Then she starts giggling and tells me to sing
the real lyrics. When I refuse, she sings it herself, very quietly, and
then I yell really loudly, “What? What did you say? I can’t hear you! What did
you say about the dugutigi?” and she breaks into giggles and runs away.
Rainy Season Stories Part 3: Market With Virginia
Background:
I come into San usually every 10-16 days to buy groceries,
check my email, and catch up with other volunteers. San has a market everyday
of the week, but the main market day is Monday. On Mondays people come from all
over the area to both buy and sell goods. For my usual, basic needs, I can go
to market on any day to get what I need. I only need to go to the Monday market
if I want something special. In fact, for the most part the PCVs try to avoid
the Monday market. It’s just so crazy, with tons of people shouting at you to
come look at their display, tons more people pushing all around you to mingle
and shop, and tons of animals for transport and sale. Not worth the stress and
hassle on a regular basis, although I do enjoy the atmosphere and the wider
selection every now and then.
The Story:
Backup to late August. I came into San for shopping and a few
PC meetings, and I ended up getting stuck there much longer than I’d intended
due to illness. Monday rolls around and it’s lunch time – I’m hungry. My friend
Virginia and I want to go out for street food, which is a pretty typical lunch
in San. Unfortunately, we’re still in the middle of Ramadan, when Muslims
refrain from eating or drinking during daylight hours. Which means street
food is a lot harder to find during the day, and we have to go beyond our usual
places to find food. Luckily the San area happens to have a lot of Christians,
so it wasn’t going to be impossible to find food, just harder.
It had rained all night and most of the morning and in general
was a dreary day. Dreary is good for market though; it can get really
exhausting to shop around outside under the hot sun in 100°+ weather. So V and
I set out to look for food and stop at the hardware store so I could buy some
paint brushes. We made it just fine to the main street through the center of
town, but then we had to veer off onto side roads. Side roads. Unpaved. It had
rained a lot. And now thousands of people were tramping around
all over. It was SOOOO muddy!!! We realized this quite quickly, as we picked
our way around giant puddles. We must’ve looked so goofy walking, picking our
feet straight up off the ground, high knees, then gingerly placing our feet
down again.
Soon our sandals started to get stuck in the mud. They got
stuck so much that I had to resort to bending down and lifting them up and
out of the mud. Unfortunately I did this with my right hand, leaving it covered
in mud, and only my taboo left hand free for exchange. Malians do not give and
receive with the left hand. Remember? Since there’s no toilet paper here, the
left hand is used for cleaning one’s self. I mean, the left hand isn’t completely taboo. But certain things,
like eating and exchanging money, are just not done with the left hand. Now I’m
sure the people I was dealing with understood why I was using my left hand – my
right hand was clearly a muddy mess – but I was sooo awkward about it and I
felt like such a dumb toubab! During one awkward transaction, I dropped my
wallet in the mud. As V and I walked down the street, I continued to get stuck.
People were pushing past me everywhere. I got so frustrated. It started to
drizzle again. I wasn’t feeling well. I started yelling out random curses and
“I hate Mali!” (in English) as I walked.
My tipping point came when both of my sandals got stuck at
once in a particularly deep pit of mud. Forget this. I stepped out of my
sandals, reached down, and plucked them both out of the mud, then continued
down the street barefoot. And I kid you not, the entire street started laughing at V and me. The whole street! Not a
mean laugh, more of a wow-you-look-silly-but-I-totally-understand! laugh. There
was nothing else to do but laugh along with them. Eventually V’s sandals broke
and she carried hers, too. People would look at us and laugh and say, “Why are
you carrying your shoes, toubab?” We’d laugh and say we couldn’t walk in them!
And so, barefoot, we picked our way the rest of the way out of the side streets
and back onto the main street where my hardware store is. Thank goodness I’m a
frequent customer there. The guys who run it know me and Chrissy and are always
really nice to us. V and I approached laughing, muddy, wet, and generally a
giant mess, and one of the guys immediately started laughing at us and brought
out a bench for us to sit on, then found a selidaga
(plastic teapot) and some water so we could wash off our hands and feet.
Honestly, we must’ve looked like mud monsters.
The trip home was much less eventful. We were able to stick to
paved roads and unpaved roads that were less frequented. We eventually did make
it safely. I do have a souvenir – I was never able to quite get all of the mud
out of my favorite pair of Malian pants – battle scar!
Monday, October 31, 2011
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
Saturday, October 8, 2011
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 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?”)
Monday, September 12, 2011
Bigger Creatures
Sometimes creepy crawlies aren’t so little. And sometimes they aren’t creepy! Here’s the rundown of the “bigger”
creatures I’ve encountered in the last few months…
We’ll start with the least favorable:
Roosters
I hate them most of all, more than cockroaches. You know how when you’re little, the
Farmer in the Dell and Old MacDonald teach you that roosters crow at the crack
of dawn every morning to wake up the world, and then their job is done? FALSE. Well, true, but they also crow every other damn moment
of the day, often starting at 3am.
And when one rooster starts…they all start. It’s like that scene in the animated 101 Dalmatians when the dogs pass along messages by howling to one
another all night. That’s what
Malian roosters do. All night. All day. For no apparent reason. It doesn’t
matter if no pretty hens are around to impress; if no other macho roosters are
around to intimidate…roosters just like to hear the sound of their own awful,
screeching, hair-raising, I-can’t-wait-to-kill-it-and-fry-it voice. I can often
be found flapping my wings and running after roosters, chasing them away. They
can often be found ignoring me.
Mice and Rats
Story #1:
I was in my ɲεgεn one night, doing
my thing, when a mouse suddenly scurried in through the drainage hole,
immediately in front of me. I’m
not sure who was more scared, me or the mouse! We both got out of there as quickly as humanly and mousely
possible.
Story #2:
I’ve been suspecting for awhile that there’s a mouse living
in my roof. My house, including
the roof, is made of mud brick.
Under the mud are rows of branches, and under the branches – what I see
from inside the house – is black plastic nailed to the ceiling. The plastic helps prevent both rain
leakage as well as random things falling down from the sticks in the
ceiling onto my floor/possessions/me. While the plastic serves
a great purpose, it does encourage creatures to live in my roof. (Hence where the original cockroaches
and spiders came from). The nights
I’ve had to sleep inside because of rain I’ve heard scurrying above the
plastic. There was always the
chance it was a lizard (which I also occasionally see inside) but I was pretty
convinced it was a mouse.
Last week I got my proof.
I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to take a nap. My little mattress and bug hut were
still set up outside but I wanted to nap inside where I wouldn’t hear the
roosters and kids. I have a big
mattress set up on my bed frame inside and my mosquito net was hanging over
it. I had just laid down to sleep
when I noticed a dark spot on the bed next to me. I turned on my flashlight to check it out – it was a
headless cockroach, surrounded by mouse droppings. OMG.
That night, I wanted to sleep in my bug hut outside but around
12:30am it started to storm, and I had to pack up and move inside. It’s terribly hot sleeping inside at
night, so I put my mattress and bug hut on the floor in my front room, hoping
to catch a breeze from my screen door. And for the next 2 hours, I lay awake listening to the mice
scurry around a foot from my head as they explored my trash can and dirty
dishes: the things I couldn’t put outside that night because of the rain! I even saw one…I could’ve touched
it. Oh my.
 |
| Mice poop in my almost-cleaned-out cubby. |
Story #3:
I go to the San Peace Corps house every 2 weeks or so, to
replenish my food stocks and update myself on the rest of the world. I usually spend a night or 2 at the
house before returning to village.
Malian mice/rats appear to have found a Home Sweet Home in our house. My
friends say Malian mice develop superpowers because they have to work so much
harder than other mice to survive. For instance, we each have a cubby where we
can keep things. I used to keep care package food from Ameriki in there,
because I could only take a little back to site at a time. I quickly discovered
the mice had discovered my stash even quicker. They were eating right through
the plastic bags. So I foiled them by putting everything in a giant Tupperware
container. Next time I came to San I found the mice had opened the Tupperware lid and eaten my Ameriki granola. Curse you,
mice! (Now I keep the food in a newly purchased metal trunk with lid and lock).
The mice aren’t so bad, really. Unless you’re up late at night you
barely even know they’re there. Except, of course, for the little presents they
leave in your cubby. Note the Tootsie Roll wrapper pieces in the photo...and then note that I do not keep Tootsie Rolls in my cubby. Hrmph.…
Oh, and a mouse chewed through one of my cell phone cords once. Luckily
I had another one.
At night though, you can hear them scuttling around the
kitchen, the library, and the living room. Sometimes you can see them. The tiny
ones scamper about in the kitchen; scaling the counters, scouting around the
trash can, and scooting under the stove to one of their many hideouts. The big
ones run back and forth between the living room and the library. I once saw one
walking on the Internet/stereo cords like tightropes. I also once saw one…or
many…scamper from the living room to the library 4 times…but never back the
other way! Which means I either kept missing its return journey, or there was
more than one mouse… But like I
said, not so bad. Unless you’re trying to sleep in the living room. That’s just
not a good idea.
Manantali
 |
| Notice the rooster staring at me. |
While we’re still on the talk of mice and rats, I have to
mention the Manantali bush rat. Now, I’ve seen small bush rats dead in my
village. But this was the granddaddy of all bush rats. It was the size of a possum (I think; the only possum I’ve
ever actually seen scared the living bejeebies out of me one night while I was
driving). Imagine a small dog. That was the size of this beast. I thank my
lucky stars I saw it from a distance that night, while I was safe among lots of
other people under the elevated, open-air thatch-roof…
 |
| Spot the monkey! |
Reptiles and Amphibians
Starting with the coolest:
1. The Chameleon
During the 2 weeks I spent in Bamako for training during June,
a few friends and I wandered out to the garden one day, looking for basil. We
didn’t find basil but we did find a chameleon! Definitely the first chameleon
I’ve seen in the wild, and an extremely cool creature. Chameleons’ eyes move independently of
one another and they can swivel all 360°.
Their feet look solid but when they walk the tips split
in half almost into a straight line, forming toes that can grasp onto plants. When they walk, they mimic the motion of a blade of grass in the
wind: slowly they take a step, then rock back and forth, then slowly take
another step. It’s fascinating!
Chameleons can also climb straight up plant stems. And of course, as everyone knows, they can change color! We didn’t see any super-bold changes, but we did watch it go through various shades of light greenish-yellow, bright green, and dark brownish-green. I actually went back to the garden with other friends to see the chameleon again, and spent quite awhile just watching it – fascinating!
2. Toads
Toads are abundant,
now that it’s rainy season. Definitely the most prolific road kill I’ve seen in
Mali. Some of them are HUGE! Like I said, Malians aren’t too fond of toads,
which I continue to use as ammo for freaking out Alima. You can really hear the
toads singing at night, both in my village and in San. I like listening to them
as I fall asleep…it’s like a Malian lullaby!
3. Lizards
Lizards are everywhere.
I like them. I talked briefly about the blue and orange ones. They have a way
of moving the front of their body that makes it look like they’re doing
pushups. My friend told me there’s a West Africa legend that says the original
Lizard was tricked by the spider Anansi to look like a criminal and made mute
so as not to defend himself, and now he can only nod his head up and down as means
of communication.
Lizards like my house. I haven’t seen too many inside, but I’m totally ok with them being there as long as they stay out of my
food and my bed. Occasionally I've seen a tail-less lizard scurrying back up under
the plastic lining my ceiling. I do have one guy that likes to hang out on my
window screen. Technically he’s outside, since only the open metal shutters
separate him from my courtyard; although he’s also kind of inside since my
window is indented into my wall and so he’s flush with the inside of my walls.
I don’t know why he likes that particular spot. I’ve never seen him in any
other position.
One of the blue and orange lizards lives somewhere in the
vicinity of my roof. I always see him coming down from on top of my house. He
always takes the same path down the side of my house and across the top of my
wall. There’s a palm tree behind my house, so maybe he lives there? I’ve named
him Macki after the head of the PC Mali Small Enterprise Development sector.
Cute and Cuddlies…sort
of?
1. Goose
Goose is a chicken. Yes, I know that’s confusing. Don’t blame
me; Chrissy named him. He was a silly little goose though, back in his cute
days. Goose comes into my courtyard through the drainage holes in my wall and
in my ɲεgεn. Back when he first started coming, he
was an awkward adolescent chicken: no longer chick, not yet hen (And yes, I do
realize that hens are female and I refer to Goose as a “he.” Sometimes Life
doesn’t make sense). I liked him
because he was so adorably awkward – he didn’t have any tail feathers…a
completely naked butt! I took a lot of photos trying to capture his cute pink
bald butt. 
But then he grew up. And
now he’s a chicken. I don’t like him much anymore. As much as I enjoy eating
chicken, they are filthy, stupid creatures who are always in my way and are too
close to roosters. Now when Goose comes to my house he brings a friend, a big,
black chicken whom I don’t like at all. They peck at everything and try to go
in my house if I leave the door open. I wish I could get rid of them but I was
so excited to see Goose when he was little that now they just come and go as
they please, usually many, many times every day. Sigh.
2. Ben Sogoba
Ben
Sogoba was a baby goat that turned up at the CSCOM (health center) one day. I
guess the head doctor’s wife wanted a pet? All of my PCV friends tried to tell
me that there was no way a goat was a pet, but they had no idea. First of all,
it had a name! (Named after Yours Truly, thank you very much!) Malians rarely
give animals names. Ben used to wander as he pleased around the CSCOM
concession. He could often be found napping in the shade under one of our
chairs. One day the doctor’s 4-year-old daughter and I dressed him in an Obama
shirt and tied my Ameriki flag bandanna on his head. Gangsta Amεriki-Pride Malian Goat. Word.
Ben was
fed by cutting a tiny hole in the corner of a plastic bag filled with milk. He
was so cute when he was hungry! Sometimes he’d get so excited he’d headbutt the
milk bag and the balance would be lost and milk would squirt out all over his
head while the person feeding him readjusted. He’d get
down on his front legs and stick his butt in the air and wag his tail like
crazy while trying to suck the milk.
Unfortunately,
Ben Sogoba is no longer with us. He’d had a few bouts of sickness and always
recovered, but one day I arrived at the CSCOM and the kids told me he was sick
and couldn’t eat or walk. He was lying inside the house on one of the kids’
beds (see, totally a pet!) and I knew he wasn’t going to make it. A few hours
later he died. It was a sad day at the CSCOM, but we still remember Ben for
his cuteness and silliness.
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