Le Blanc: November 2007

...from my favorite friend that listens but doesn't talk, my journal. by the way, i go by the name "Djeneba Coulibaly" in village

9/27/07

Things that should still amaze me but don't: there is a proper way to eat with your hands from the communal bowl..sick kids walk around uncared for..babies sit naked in the dirt..the full moon shines so brightly it casts shadows. I feel far far away tonight-in a good way. There are ways of being in touch but I guess if I can't be there I can't mourn not being there. Besides, life is a struggle (according to my language teacher), and the fact that I know I'm challenging myself to my fullest capacity keeps me here and kind of amazes me. For once I am doing, and not dreaming. It's a good feeling to be in control of my own life for once, and not having it dictated to me (read: college).

Job Aspiration of the day: guy who sings prayers to the village over the mosque loudspeaker.

Question of the Day: hungry, or nauseous?

9/29

If you think wells are creepy, try going to the well behind your secluded concession on a pitch black night, with lightning flashing in the distance. Oh yeah, and that patch of grass you walked over to get there? It just rustled. More than once.

On a lighter note, the sky was creamsicle orange and pastel purple while the sun was setting today. The sun sets on a mud-brick town...

10/3

Did I really just eat with a FORK from a PLATE that was on a TABLE? While watching color TV with a DVD player underneath? Granted, we were watching channel one aka the one channel that the tv gets, and it was connected to a battery. Also, we were sitting in the dirt yard and I was swatting flies and mosquitos the entire time, but still. That was amazing. Maybe living next to the elementary school won't be so annoying, because that means my neighbors are teachers, and this is apparently reverse world where teachers are rich and have solar panels and batteries and TVs and drive motos. sweet.

10/4

I'm feeling a lack of direction at the moment. I don't like this wandering aimlessly and making my own work thing. The villagers aren't giving me much guidance, either, even though I want them to. But they've got lives to live and mouths to feed and whatnot. I don't want to stop loving mornings...but I like to have tasks and feel good about waking up and doing something, no matter how small it is. Maybe I'll go for a bike ride or something. Before the sun gets mean.

later....I've learned to not be afraid of things people hand to me to taste. Usually I'm hungry enough to eat whatever it is, and if I'm really lucky it might be a piece of meat, which is savored no matter what part of the animal it is. But usually it's just some root or fruit that a kid has brought back from the bush, or homemade peanut butter or some other creation. After I eat it, though, I immediately think about how many hands I've shaken since the last time I washed my own hands, and I feel a little dysentery coming on. Yummy!

10/5

Culture shock has worn off a little but moments still amaze me. You probably shouldn't argue cardinal directions with a geography major, but it's ok if we're interrupted by a group of women marching through village, clapping chanting singing for rain, and later on you tell me about the marabouts and griots living in our village. I'm kind of amazed that I'm living and breathing and holding my own in this most primitive of cultures. Even poor by African standards. Not the most primitive or isolated of Malian villages, but maybe close to it. I can't believe I can survive at this level.

10/8

I like that I bought a secondhand shirt at market today, out of a wheelbarrow full of shirts, for 30 cents. I like that when I asked a spice seller if she had garlic powder, she started laughing and said, you can pound some dried garlic... I keep having these moments where it's like, what if in the past you could see yourself now...shirtless, sweating, eating a raw tomato in your mud hut while kids run around screaming outside. I wouldn't have even believed the part about the tomato.

10/10

I like my newfound ability to make babies just scream at the site of a white person. Maybe they think I'm gonna adopt them or something.Thoughts: I think my hands/fingerprints are suffering permanent damage from eating scorching hot food out of the bowl, without utensils. Or maybe I'm just on my way to integrating!!

10/11

I like that I walked into the village square today just in time to see 10 men holding down a live cow, and a few seconds later getting its neck slit with a machete. haha, that was disgusting. Oh, Africa...women washing clothes by the well, men slaughtering a cow in the dirt, all behind the mosque made of mud. Also, watching kids make and sell henna powder (for decorating feet), from plant to leaf to mortar to sifter to powder, is pretty damn cool.

10/12

So, my attempt to talk to the village chief (dugutiki) by myself didn't go over so well yesterday, but I can't even believe I had enough guts to go and do that. Maybe I should actually try to plan what I'm going to ask him next time. I'm really having an up week. And today was a reward-the end of Ramadan, a certified holiday, and it was good-cloudy and cool in the morning, 2 different kinds of MEAT and rice and potatoes for lunch, (divine), not having to do anything except say amen to blessings all day...rain! in the afternoon. To remember today: kids in their new outfits and brand new plastic shoes, running around town spouting off blessings to adults to earn a few coins apiece from them.

10/14

Wow..this is how ingrained greetings have become in me...I saw some movement in the corner of my eye..and almost just said good afternoon to some passing cows.

10/16

Today-trying to explain the Georgia drought to some Malians. "In my village we get water from a big lake, and the lake is almost dried up because it's not raining." I can just see them imagining people walking back and forth from Lake Lanier with buckets of water. In other news, I'm constantly encouraged by the niceness of Malians. "You don't understand? you will. you don't know it? you will." I can't believe what a second and third and fourth chance you can get with people here.

10/19

Even the insects go hungry here...they're so desperate they're eating my malaria pills. ha! (author's note: I'm not taking malaria pills because I have malaria. I have to take them every day just to keep from getting malaria..but it's still possible to get malaria while taking the pills.)

Friday October something 2007; I don't know what you're doing tonight, but I'm rolling out bread loaves on a rickety almost busted table under the light of a dying flashlight. My host family are the town bread makers...I work for my share!

10/22

do horses bleed white? Not a metaphor but an actual question, and I don't have Wikipedia here to answer it. Spur of the moment trip to San today by horse cart. The ride back from market was a little hotter and bumpier and slower, seeing as one horse was pulling a cart, 10 sacks of rice, 3 Malians and a toubab. Everyone and every thing works hard here. We've got a machine for that in America.

10/28

Good advice: it's probably a good idea to at least strain the visible worms out of your bucket of well water before you bathe with it. Finally got my own well bag! Now I can draw worm-infested water any time I want, without having to walk the extra 200 feet to the water pump.

10/30/07, 5:40 am; can't sleep...someone across town has been pounding millet since the prayer call.

11/6/07

Is it funny or sad when my little brother is proudly showing off his bed to me? ...a plastic sack half full of dried baobab leaves. And here's my blanket, Djeneba...another sack. Slept under my refugee blanket for the first time last night. The coldness progressed quickly in a month...first I was sweating sleeping outside; then sleeping with a sheet; 2 sheets; socks and pants...think it's time to start actually sleeping in the house when 2 sheets and a thick wool blanket isn't enough. Of course, I was sleeping on the roof. I might have been a little more exposed to the elements. But you can see all the stars! today's highlight: listening to my little brother repeat his English lesson over and over to remember it- hate hate hate hate hate hate...nine, ten. haha.

11/9/07

I totally had (another) Peace Corps moment today...after a month of feeling left out, because I'm not like these people at all- I'm not married, I don't have 3 babies at 23, I can't even really cook- and lazy, having been accused of not doing any work, which is true, but only because I don't know how to yet...I found myself sitting in a sorghum field, watching women walk back and forth carrying grain to load onto the horse cart. I started thinking about how I'll never be like a real Malian, and hence I'll never really fit in here. A girl my age had left her baby beside me and told me, since I wasn't going to work, to watch the baby and pick it up if it cried. I sat on a turned over aluminum bucket feeling more and more inadedequate, especially when the baby started crying and I didn't know what to do. Luckily she stopped crying a moment later...and the women came over, the mom scooping up her baby and telling me we were going to the other side of the road now. Someone picked up my bucket for me and moved it to my new sitting place, and the young mom sat beside me, on the ground, and nursed her baby. I sat for a moment watching the women work on their new pile. Feeling lazy and frustrated with myself, I finally worked up the courage to get up and flip over my seat. No one said anything as I walked to the pile and started laying the stacked sorghum tassels in my bucket. Another woman smiled at me and helped me lift the bucket onto my head, confident in my ability to carry it to the horse cart. Amazingly, none of the other women laughed that hard at the site of me doing actual work. I made my delivery and walked back to the pile. The silence was finally broken when, after a few round trips, I was told that if I was tired I could sit down. I said I understood, and loaded another bucketfull.

I hope to hell my attempt at gaining some respect worked, because I worked with the women until the sun was nearly down and the last tassel loaded onto the cart. If nothing else it was a good feeling to do actual work for the first time in 3 something months...but I think we got something out of it. Me-sore arms. The women-hopefully the sentiment that I'm actually capable of doing work, and will do so for them. Baby steps, right? I've got 2 years to figure this job out.

11/10/07

There's something peculiar about dysentery that leaves you nauseous and yet craving a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich at the same time. I'm getting to know my body well here. Sickness is coming every 2 or 3 weeks, but I guess it doesn't help that I dine on a table made of sand, aka the ground, with goats and sheep tied up a few feet away, their dander dancing in the wind. I think I'm adjusting little by little, though. Maybe one day I'll be immune.

and now a reward for making it through all that...some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

this is what sorghum looks like...and a shea tree for good measure