Running water

A good month. It started with Halloween - the insanity of such a frivolous, fabulous holiday magnified by the bewildered Malians as we stepped out of the Kita house dressed as super heros, millet stalks, Bush taxis and a vertitable cast of characters. Kristen and I went as two mut huts, complete with a broom shoved on our heads for our straw roofs. Costumes slowly stripped away as the night blazed with dancing, plastic bags of gin and hulahooping. There is such a luxury that comes with letting your strange Americaness float comfortably among other Westerners, flinging off the awkwardness that cloaks you in village as you fret to cover your knees and respect the cekorobas (old men). Speaking of which, I heard a fantastic Malian proverb the other day:

"You can jump over the old man's excrement, but you can't jump over his speech."

After Halloween a few of us jumped into Bamako for a few days. I had an HIV awareness meeting to attend, and we tried our best to soak in the Bamako goodness: ice cream, diet coke, chinese food. The post Halloween party was still roaring there, and we spent most of our time at our friends house, talking amongst the carved watermellon jackolanterns and the persuasive call of the Mosque next door at prayer time. Heading back we bumped into a fellow Kita friend and hopped on the night bus back to Kita, where the three of us squished into a two sear row as goats wrapped in sacks whined on the roof above us. When I came back I discovered that my computer had contracted a nasty virus - too many dirty flashdrives. Its out of commission until I get back to Bamako for training in December.

Despite my anticipation at returning to village - laughable Bambara, annoying children and ego challenges looming ahead - I reached the pink tipped millet fields and friendly straw roofs with a sigh of relief. The relief was short lived as I ran straight to the toilet, beginning my two weeks of contemplating the ingenuity of the Bambara word for diarrhea, konoboli (running stomach). Between bathroom trips though I was able to begin the incredibly uncomfortable experience of my Baseline Survey. My humility soared as I asked the chief of the village if he had heard of STIs and, not realizing I was talking to the Imam (Moslim priest), I asked, amid a cloud of 20 children, if he knew where to buy condoms. Still, I left each family with a sense of purpose, and I am ingraining my purpose into this village as I try to understand what my role is here. A representative for the Women's Association came up to me and asked if I could help them create a women's garden, which should be an interesting project. Thankfully my site mate is an environmental volunteer, so hopefully we can get that project started together.

The usual sadness still greets me at the health center though. A woman 8 months pregnant finally coming in for her first pre-natal consultation, so weak due to her severe anemia her husband finally gave her the money to come. As we put her on an IV a grandmother holds her one year old grandson convulsing with cerebral malaria, and she is screaming "Oh Allah!" over and over through glassed over eyes. We try to put an IV in the child's tiny hands and feet but can't find a vein with his extremities bloated with edema, the body's desperate attempt to keep hydrated depsite malnutrition.

As my language becomes more coherent, I have finally been able to make friends here, a task that is harder than it seems as many people either see me as a bumbling awkward outsider who can't understand a word or are trying to see how much they can get out of me. I think I might pull my hair out if I hear "Where is my present?" one more time. Still, I try to remind myself that manners is as cultural as anything else. And with real friends I am starting to have some real conversations about living here. As Soliba and I discussed the difference in families in our countries, I tried to explain why it was not only okay but even (fully aware of my Western ethnocentricity) better to have less children (7 is the average for Malian women). She was incredulous when I told her that americans have 2-3 children on
average, and asked me:

"But what if one of your children dies?"

From an isolated point of view this logic seems flawless - the more children you have the more they can work for the family. This is also one of the values that is written in the Koran. And since almost a quarter of children die before the age of 5, this loss must be accounted for. My limited Bambara tried to
explain that children in the US dont die as often because their
parents have fewer children, and can take better care of each one. But
who am I to tell them to reject their culture, and how do they grasp
that they can slowly get themselves out of poverty by having less
kids? (this is arguably the key cause of their poverty and the world's
food crisis).

Such a sad reminder of this vicious cycle of poverty and tradition.
Poverty perpetuated by tradition, naivety.
(Is this their leaders fault, or the population that doesn't ask for better?)
A need for stability through tradition perpetuated by poverty.
(Is this our fault?)
This shouldn't be something anyone should get used to.

After two weeks and many bathroom trips I headed back to Kita and discovered that I have a stomach parasite. Not really a shocker. We spent a few days with our tutor under the guava tree as I got through the intense anti-parasitic medicine which made my water taste like metal. Me and my friend jumped on the 1am bus to a big Thanksgiving gathering with tons of other PCVs. We made 20 pies, killed 5 turkeys and filled a bucket with fruit salad, another with stuffing and mashed potatos. The next day, despite our food and whisky hangovers, 12 of us decided to head to a nearby waterfall. All of us somehow squeezed into a sedan, and I spent the two hour trip with the clutch awkwardly in between my thighs. When we passed the Gendarme (police) stop a few people climbed onto the roof, ducking renegade tree branches as we bounced through the path as if on a dried up narrow river bed. We teetered on the narrow bridge made of a few bamboo branches stuck together and hiked, following the sound of the water. The waterfalls were incredible. We climbed up the rocks, hoisting ourselves up with vines, and jumped off the rainbow tinted waterfalls into the shimmering pool 20 feet below. Beautiful.