Monday, February 13, 2012
The Dog With the World’s Smallest Bladder made me get up twice
during the night, so I was not thrilled when he was ready to go out again by
7am, but who am I to argue with a dog who takes up half of my bed, brings down
my mosquito net if he jumps down without my help, and scratches at my screen door
anyway until I get up? Spoiled.
It was a warmer morning today but still cool enough for me to
put on my slippers and wrap up in my blanket to read, something I will miss in
just a few weeks when it’ll be too hot for that. Other PCVs made all sorts of
fun of me for lugging my slippers to Mali, but for 3 months out of the year my
feet are happy campers! This morning started the same as most mornings, with
intermittent reading and cooking breakfast, all mixed in with me trying to
convince myself to put down my book and get on with my day. It’s a losing
battle everyday, and today the kids weren’t too persistent, so I finally had to
force myself to get going at 10am. The kids, with their secret kid hotline,
came flooding in as soon as I opened my door and crowded around for the daily
spectacle of dish-washing. Sidiki insisted on pouring the rinse water over each
dish as I cleaned it – I suppose it’s almost like having a faucet and tap.
Sidiki and Amadou also couldn’t stop talking about the fact
that I had promised to go to their house today – they always come to my
house, so this is a big deal! But before I went, I had a very important task:
one of the balls the kids play with at my house had been kicked a little too
high, landed on my roof, and was stuck up there. With none of the bigger boys
around to retrieve it, it was up to me. Secretly I was really excited at the
prospect of climbing onto my roof. My 10 year old host brother has done it, so
why shouldn’t I be able to?? I’ve never had a good reason though, and now I
finally had one! Getting up there was pretty easy: chair to ɲεgεn wall to roof. The ball was quickly
retrieved and I took a moment to enjoy the view. I was also secretly
disappointed that no one other than the kids in my yard was within waving view
of my super-cool feat. Sigh.
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| Above the wall on the right is the corner of my roof that I climbed. |
Getting down was not
quite as easy. I’ve always been exponentially better at going up than coming
back down. Once when I was in 1st grade I got stuck up in a friend’s
tree for awhile, and had to play it cool like I wanted to be up there for a long time before her dad came to help
me down. But I think I’m sort of past that age, at least in village. That would
be so embarrassing if someone had to
go fetch an 11 year old, or my cekoroba
(old man) dad to help me down. So I sucked it up and wiggled down on my belly
from my roof to the ɲεgεn wall, all 5 feet of it. After that, all the kids were waiting down
below to help me out, so that part was easy! I think I managed to pull it off
looking pretty cool. Of course since I was still wearing my pajamas they ended
up way too dirty to sleep in again, but that’s the price you pay for great
adventure!!
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| My host dad, Madu Sogoba. A great man. |
I changed clothes and
headed off to Sidiki and Amadou’s house. They were so proud to have me come
over! I checked out the photos they showed me and admired the new baby for a
bit before going back home to get my things and sit with my dad for a few
minutes. He loves saying and doing crazy things just to watch my reaction, and
today was no exception: he lit a small pile of gunpowder and blew it up just for the hell of
it. I love my host dad.
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| An Ŋoni Image from mandinkamagic.com |
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| Fatim |
I soon caught on that you’re supposed to give men like
this some money for their skills (it became clear when 9-year-old Fatim told
me, “Give him money!”) but unfortunately I’d lost my changepurse the day before
and all I had left were big bills, which would be like giving a street
performer $20-$50. Not really in my budget! Fatim insisted that if I didn’t
give him money Moose will die (she’s fairly melodramatic) but I think we’ll be
ok.
After lunch I talked
to the doctor, Oussé, and the pharmacist, Tidiani, about what I hope will be my
first big project. We want to plant moringa trees at the CSCOM. Moringa is a plant that grows extremely well in tough climates with poor soil. The leaves - when picked, dried, and pounded to a fine powder - can be sprinkled onto any dish. The benefits of consuming moringa are astonishing: gram for gram they have 7x as much Vitamin C as oranges, 4x as much Vitamin A as carrots, 4x as much calcium as milk, 3x as much potassium as bananas, and an equal amount of protein as an egg. All of these nutrients are important to a healthy and balanced diet, but are difficult for impoverished Malians to obtain. Moringa is an alternative source for these important nutrients and the plant grows at a rapid rate: a plant is ready for harvest 6 months after planting and can be harvested every 4-6 weeks.
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| Moringa. Image from http://fitnessforyourwellness.blogspot.com |
We’d tried this project once before, but due to a variety of unfortunate
circumstances the trees all died. This time I’m much better prepared! I’m
hoping that if these trees grow I can plant more, start a moringa garden at the
CSCOM, and incorporate it into the daily life of women with small babies and children, later
reaching out to the larger population. It’s one of the most sustainable
projects I’ve heard of, and therefore I think it’s really great. I just have to
make it work.
We decided the tree
nursery will start at my house: predatory animals (scary ones, like sheep and
donkeys) don’t come into my yard, I have a lot of shade – good for baby trees –
and it’s a convenient place for me to water the trees daily. I’m optimistic
about this project!
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| My awesome lounge chair. |
I wanted to plant the
moringa seeds as soon as possible, but I needed help. So I enlisted the help of
my favorite go-to person, Alima. Who would’ve known a 12 year old girl could be
so incredibly useful?? First order of business: getting dirt. Alima and her
brother Yaya and I grabbed my 2 buckets and set off for the fields. I had no
idea where Alima was taking us, and we wandered around aimlessly for a long
time, backtracking a bit, until she decided we were at the right spot – in the
middle of a path, about a 10-15 minute walk through the fields and the edge of
town to my house. Allah only knows why she went out that far, in a village literally made of dirt, and bordered
to its very edges by fields. I find it easier not to ask questions sometimes, often
because I get the standard “foi”
answer: “nothing.” (Kids everywhere are the same: What did you do today? Foi. Where are you going? Foi. Why are you at my house? Foi.)
We’d been followed by
another group of 3 kids, so between the 6 of us we quickly filled up my buckets
with dirt. Alima looks at me and says, “You’re going to cry now!” I asked her, “Why?”
She responded, “Pick up the bucket.” I tried. Reeaaalllly hard! -I got it a few inches
off the ground. Turns out buckets of dirt are deceptively heavy! The kids
howled with laughter at my expression, and Alima helped me raise the bucket
onto my head, then fitted her own headscarf between my head and the bucket for
a cushion. I called out, “Walai! A ka
girin!” which more or less translates to: “Holy moly! That’s heavy!” I
think that’s the first time I’ve ever used walai
properly in a sentence and it set the kids off laughing again. The other kids
helped Alima lift her own bucket – cushionless – and we set off.
Now, I’m pretty proud
of myself for the skills I’ve gained in carrying things on my head. But that
damn bucket was by far the heaviest thing I’ve ever carried! I was literally
praying that I wouldn’t end up with a neck injury (sorry, Mama!) as we walked
through all those fields we had passed on the way there. Alima’s house is near
the edge of town, and as we entered her concession I was surrounded by people
laughing at me – my struggles must’ve been showing! They had me stop and give
my bucket to one of the other girls who had followed us into the fields, maybe
9 or 10 years old. Luckily not only am I used to being laughed at, I have long
since accepted that girls more than half my age are way more hardcore than me.
Certainly their necks are a lot stronger! The two girls carried the buckets the
rest of the way to my house while I rolled my neck around and slumped forward
while walking, triggering ever more rounds of giggles.
At home I was ready
to fill the tree nursery bags, but Alima made me wait for a reason I didn’t
understand. Soon Yaya returned with a sifter to sift out the rocks and old
pieces of millet straw – good thing Alima’s around to be in charge of things
like this! After sifting, I realized we were left with basically a bunch of
sand. I’m worried that it isn’t good enough to support plant life, despite the
fact that moringa grows well in crappy soil. I keep telling myself that the
dirt/sand came from out in the fields, and although we got it from the path,
it’s not like people bother to lay a bunch of sand down as paths: it’s just the
paths they’ve naturally made through the exact same dirt/sand where everything
else grows. So my fingers are crossed! We filled the bags and the kids helped
me carry them to a corner of my yard: not so conveniently, it's the corner where
Moose poops the most. Fertilizer?
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| The debris, the sifter, and all of the sand piled into one big bucket. |
The rest of the night
passed quickly. Alima, Yaya, and I went to the road to buy bread (a man goes to
San every evening to buy it and we try to catch him on his way home so I can
buy it cheaper “wholesale” rather than at the butiki), and by the time I came
home all the kids had darted off to their own homes and surprisingly never came
back. With the night to myself I made a delicious potato soup for Moose and I
and spent a good part of the night reading. I’ve also recently realized that
soon Hot Season will be here and all the chocolate in my house will melt into unidentifiable
blobs. So I’ve tasked myself with the chore of stuffing my face with chocolate
several times a day – it’s a hard life I lead. Delicious now, but so sad that
soon the beauty of chocolate in village will soon come to an end until next
Cold Season!
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