Friday, February 17, 2012
I woke up early this morning, ready to get the show on the
road! But of course, as always, I overestimated my abilities to get ready
quickly. By the time I made breakfast for me and Moose, washed dishes from the
farani extravaganza, and packed, I was about an hour and a half behind
schedule. Luckily I live in Mali and I don’t really have a schedule, and
luckily I’m used to my own lateness and don’t really worry about it anymore. My
only concern was that I had a bunch of errands to get done in San, and since
today is Friday – prayer day – I knew much of the city would shut down after
lunch. So I did need to get a move on.
I picked up Alima at her house to wait at the road with me and
we took Moose and my bags to sit and wait for a bashé . There’s no bashé schedule,
so basically you just have to sit around and wait until a car comes. It can be
frustrating at times. This time we hadn’t waited too long when a bashé came -- but the driver took one look
at Moose and said we couldn’t go; they were too full. I protested that Moose
could sit on my lap; he said Moose could ride on the top. I refused, sure he
was joking. Apparently he wasn’t. But no way my baby was going up there! When I
texted Chrissy about it she was indignant on my behalf: “Tell them they let
chickens and sheep on, how are they not going to accept a dog? How do you say
discrimination in Bambara?”
So we sat and waited. And waited. Three more vehicles passed
us, none of them public transport, and none willing to stop for me. The wind
started to pick up and then got worse and worse till the air was full of dust
and it was hard to breathe. Alima had to go home to make toh for her family, but Djeneba came and sat with me, along with
the fluid crowd that I attract, who come and go after finding out what I’m doing
and where I’m going. Finally, a little after an hour of waiting, when I was
really starting to worry, another bashé came, and this one only had 3 other people in it – that never happens! They
charged me extra for Moose but that was no problem; I’d expected it now that
he’s bigger.
We had an easy ride to San; Moose behaved himself very well
and only drooled on my leg a lot. We did stop at the last village before San –
it’s the turnoff to take the road up north, and 2 of our passengers were
getting off there. Unfortunately, I’m apparently developing a bad habit of not
recognizing the bashé money
collectors (who ride in the bashé with us) and instead end up thinking that they’re kids begging for money, so then I yell
at them. (That makes me sound like a terrible person – I’m not, it’s a complicated
corrupt “Koranic” teaching system that I can’t explain now, but it totally
exploits kids and they’re also super annoying so if you tell them no and they
keep bugging you it’s normal to give them crap). Anyway, the money collector
was apparently not pleased with my mistake, because I gave him too much money
(I didn’t have the correct change on me) and when we got to San he wouldn’t
give me the correct amount of change. I didn’t feel like fighting it too hard
so I gave up and left – I had lots to do!
I took Moose to the house where he promptly barked his tail
off at our guard (Moose is very wary of adult Malian men) and then ran inside
where Henry was sitting on the couch, and he was so excited to see Henry (whom he’d
never met before) that he peed all over Henry’s hat and book and then jumped
into his lap. Good thing Henry likes dogs! Just like every other Malian, Moose
must assume that since I’m white I know and am friends with any other white
person he sees, because he loves all of the Peace Corps boys. (I'm not being racist. All the PC boys in my area are white ).
I left Moose with Henry and headed off to the bank where –
thank Allah! – my ATM card actually worked, and then to the post office to pick
up a bunch of packages from awesome people! (Thanks Mama, Alicia, and Chris
& Ning!) I delivered those to the house, but my work wasn’t done – I had to
hurry and take Moose to the vet to get his rabies shot before lunch, and I only
had about 30 minutes. Henry gave me directions and I headed out, stopping along
the way to greet my friend Saly who sells awesome sandwiches.
We found the vet – I have no idea why I was expecting an
actual office. In my mind, I was picturing something like the vet back home,
which is way nicer than the hospitals here. Needless to say, that was wrong. It
was basically a butiki with a small counter with meds behind it, and a
refrigerator for the vaccinations. And 2 men in white coats. Good thing they
had a cow on their sign or I might’ve walked right past it. I was surprised
just how easy it all went. I’d been worried that maybe I needed an appointment
– again, I don’t know what I was thinking. The first doctor knew exactly what I
wanted and spoke clearly to me so I could understand him. In a matter of 10
minutes he prepared the shot, gave it to Moose (who didn’t even cry, I was so
proud!), and sat me down to fill out Moose’s vaccination card.
Technically this card means I could take Moose back to Ameriki
without having to Quarantine him, but for anybody who’s been wondering, I do
not plan to take Moose home. As much as I love him, and as much as I hate to
leave him even for an afternoon, I’ll be in no position to have a dog when I go
back; not to mention he spends his life here always outside, never on a leash, going where he pleases - Ameriki is no life for him. so I’ll leave him with Alima. She’s wonderful with him and he loves her
too, so I’m not at all worried about what will happen to him when I'm gone.
Moose’s shot was done, but errands still weren’t over! I
stopped at the seed store to pick up seeds for a potential future garden
(tomatoes, eggplant, and green peppers), went to my favorite butiki to show the
owner, my friend Baco, how much Moose had grown, and dropped Moose off at the
house before going to the carpenter. I’ve been wanting a bookshelf for my house
ever since I moved in 9 months ago, but I knew it would be a lot of money and I
just never got around to it. But I've decided to suck it up and deal with the
cost; I just have too many books and Peace Corps manuals cluttering up my
table. I’d carefully measured just how big I wanted the shelves and drawn up a
picture so I could explain exactly what I wanted. The carpenter is used to
dealing with us PCVs so he was great at talking with me, and I left there
satisfied with his understanding of I wanted. Not so satisfied with the price;
I’m pretty sure I was overcharged (a common thing when you’re a walking ATM,
aka white) but I did cut the price by 20% so I figured I’d deal. I wanted the
shelves too badly to care.
 |
| Awesome chameleon-fabric outfits. |
Errands over, I finally made it back to the house, proud of
all my accomplishments! I got to sit down and eat lunch and open my packages.
Chrissy arrived and the 3 of us devoured the bag of Bugles my mom had sent –
tastes like Grandma’s house! After awhile Chrissy and I went to our tailor’s
shop. His name is Abu and he’s actually originally from my village, and I really enjoy sitting and
talking with him. He’s also used to PCVs and is great at talking to us and
making our clothes so they fit the way we Americans want them to fit. In fact,
Abu is known by PCVs all over Mali as being a particularly good tailor. I’d
ordered a few dresses from him and Chrissy wanted to put in her orders. I’d
forgotten to ask Abu to put pockets in the dress he’d finished, so we sat
around while he ripped out the seams and put in pockets for me – talk about
good service! My dress is totally awesome – it has chameleons all over it! A
Mali gem for sure. :D
The rest of the day was relaxing. We’d decided to make pizza
for dinner, so we got all the supplies and Chrissy made a homemade crust. My
mom had sent me squeezy pizza sauce and Chrissy’s mom had sent her Gouda cheese
so we (Chrissy) made one hell of a pizza. Probably the best I’ve had in the
last year – so good! I was so sad when it was over. It was ok though, because
we had homemade chocolate chip cookies from my dad and homemade oatmeal cookies
from my mom. I’m pretty sure Henry and I ate at least 10 cookies each – no
joke! A fabulous end to a productive day!
 |
| Delicious, delicious pizza. Mmm. |
No comments:
Post a Comment