pocket full of peanuts

My pockets are full of peanuts - or rather, the little sack I bring around with me each evening as I make my neighborhood rounds - along with my soap for washing my hands, my sacred flashlight (the solar rechargeable batteries quickly fading), my notebook and a real ink pen which I splurged on at the Tubab store in Bamako. After my cold bucket bath beneath a fading orange sun - which blazed with fury 30 minutes ago - I lock my tin doors and walk down the short dirt path to Founeba's house, making sure to avoid the goat shit and broken Baobab fruit with its white chalky center scraped out by the grubby hands of some bare bellied toddler. I pass the piles of peanut shells, the last ground remains of the waning peanut harvest season, and stacks of irregular mud bricks freshly molded from the cool earth. Foune'ba is probably sitting on the low wood stool in front of a black iron pot licked by low flames, which is propped on a pile of dried mud, creating a stovetop of sorts. With a wood stick she is stirring the sauce bubbling in the pot - tiga dega na (peanut butter sauce) or saga saga na (a slimy leaf sauce) - which she'll taste and add more Maggi or peanut butter like precious bit of gold ore. I read to her as she tends to the sauce and her two month-old baby Omou who is swathed in bright patterned cloth with her brown little face quietly looking out. When the sauce is done she gives Omou her breast and I hand her the health manual from which I've been reading, and help her stumble through the Bambara translation which I can read fluently since I've grown up sounding out letters but she has only learned to read since her training to become a midwife. I envy her understanding even if she still confuses every n and m and I've learned that for both of us it will come, dooni dooni (small small). We read about AIDS in Mali as she gasps at the statistics, or about weaning children off breast milk without creating protein deficiencies, or the importance of vaccinations. And while yesterday she was angry at me for leaving to visit Kristen on the slow Saturday, and even more for my carelessness in leaving my chair and soap outside which to her feels like an ostentatious show of my money, we're over it. We both know were differed - I resent the mother like role she tries to take which is really just communal coexistence regardless of our professional relationship, and she doesn't always grasp my American independence. We're both learning.

After the darkness begins to filter in I say my night blessings and take off for my host families house as one of Founeba's daughters (or one of her husband's other daughters, she's wife number 4) follows with a bowl of sauce and rice sitting on her head without the slightest threat of its downfall. The women carry themselves with model like stability despite the threat of their dangling earrings. I eat dinner with my host father and his two younger sons; his older sons are off at the nearest high school, 2 hours away in Kita. I wash my hands with the soap which I have been offering them for months but they finally accept, which could have something to do with the big hand washing mural I've just finished on the wall of the health center. We all squat around the bowl on the floor as he grunts and holds the flashlight. Tonight Sani is making dublini, hibiscus tea. It is heavy and sweet with its fragrant magenta juice and equal parts sugar. A group of her classmates show up. Their presence is at a first glance imposing; their tall thin figures draped in bright panyes which don't match their skirts, which don't match their shirts or their headwraps anyway. Their swirling palate of color is lit by the bonfire which we sit around, and in fact all I can see are the distant family bonfires where the women squat on low stools around their endless children snacking on their after dinner roasted peanuts. The complete night scene is only broken by an occasional anonymous passerby with their flashlight whispering good evening with equally whispered responses from attentive ears. As the girls sit down the intimidation fades as I recognize each face - 13 and 14 year olds, strong and emboldened by their impending roles as wives and mothers only a year or two away. Even some classmates their age carry their notebooks atop their round stomachs.

As my host mother Hagie shells the peanuts in a weaved bowl the group alternates between pensive silence, complete and comfortable as they stare into the fire, and lively gossip about the village. I am slowly beginning to carve out the Malinke words and phrases from the dark cloud of sounds, which I can connect to the Bambara words I've learned and sew together with context, the quilt of Malian languages. Their chatter sounds like drum and base; their tongues heavy with h and j sounds, interrupted sporadically by the quick high pitched l's and k's.

After long stretches of silence I feel I've put in some decent "family time" and move on to the next concession over, Soliba's house. Here I sit down amidst a warm chorus of greetings and bubbling children who run up to me and smile. I sit down on the wood bench, relieved that they don't scurry to get me a better chair - the respectful motion always embarrasses me, and anyway I'd much rather sit next to my friends with their children at my knees. Some of the toddlers lay on my lap and try to play with my hair, which they still can't believe is connected to my head, and mutter questions that I have no chance of understanding with their lispy Malinke tongues. I am teaching Soliba English, and we've gotten a few phrases down that she's asked to learn. These are of the utmost importance here: "Come eat!" "Lets go to Behon," and "How is your family?" These frequent Malian phrases sound random and quite useless in the American English. But of course language is so much more than just a string of sounds; it is entwined with all the peculiar way each culture lives, what they value, what is respectful or even trivial in this little Malian culture that is, well, the whole world. At least to them, and for this moment me too.

Monsieur BonBon

I'm back in Bamako after an incredible hike through Dogon country.
We took the 12 hour bus ride up to Sevrae and spent the night there. We ate ouijila, a huge ball of dough in curry like sauce, surprisingly delicious and a lovely deviation from rice and peanut sauce. The next day we headed out to Sam's village in Sanga. As we bounded through the sandy road, the beige sandstone huts reminding me of Jerusalem, we were accosted by the pleasant aroma of chives, one of their primary sources of income. The kelly green fields were quite a contrast to the sandy mountains, the only vegetation besides the tall thick baobab trees stubbornly pushing through the rocks, their bulbous fruit hanging off the almost bare branches like macabre Christmas ornaments. We all teemed with jealousy as we climbed up the cliff to get to Sam's house, located on a summit overlooking the green chive valley and streams, the
mountains looming in the distance. We slept on the roof and woke up each morning up to dusty sunrises.

We spent a few days in Sanga, climbing our way over to the marketplace where the women sold dyed indigo fabrics, mangoes and wood carvings. The Dogon mask festival was beginning, and it was strange feeling like a tourist as we bumped into groups of westerners. While officially Muslim, most Dogon people still hold fast to their traditional animist beliefs of spirits which they call "genies." Many of the houses had different mud decorations on their roofs, signifying each person's profession: medicine man, goat hunter, clothmaker. We visited the house of the "Oldest Man," who acts as an arbiter for disputes among villagers. The low ceilings prevented any man from standing up so that no man is above another, even in the heat of an argument.
Christmas night we watched a dance competition. Men and women in blue indigo robes spun and danced with the fury in the middle of a crowd of spectators. Still, it felt limp in contrast to the drum circles in my village, maybe less inspired in front of the crowd of spectators. Or maybe I just miss my village. Afterwards we had a huge Christmas dinner that Sam and her host family made at the Mayor's house, complete with a roasted goat on a huge spit, and millet beer. After dinner her villagers surprised us with a welcoming dance. Each quartier of the village presented themselves, dancing in line to the persistent beat while playing their wooden flutes. As they reached us they began to crouch down, holding a medallion of mirrors and white tile. Finally they would end up on their knees, offering the plate to us as everyone in the circle shook their hips and sang. After each neighborhood went they began to pass the medallion to each of us, and we followed suit in presenting ourselves to the villagers.


The next day we began our three-day hike. It began with a steep climb down the mountain, where Malian adolescents rushed to help us down the gaping drops and slippery rocks. We continued on to some of the villages in the cliffs. Each village seemed piled vertically on the side of the mountains, at incredible heights for daily hour long trips to get to water or food. Its amazing what people can get used to. Centuries of isolation from the surrounding cliffs with little water has proven the endurance of the Dogon people. Our guide explained that these villages were located among the higher cliffs where they could see approaching tribes that threatened to steal their goats or children. As we entered each village we were accosted by long-legged Malian children, their faces pale with the desert dust. Divide and conquer they would, following us with their well rehearsed French phrases asking for very particular items: "Monsieur BonBon?" (Mr. Candy?), "Cava Bidon?" (How are you, water bottle?), or "Madame Bici!" (Mrs. Pen!). After almost six months in our villages, we've become a bit jaded with the these children, after all we have our own village kids to take care of! And we're all more concerned about their protein intake then their sugar. Although we were happy to pass off our empty water bottles. We passed the various sacrificial spots, where goats would be killed for good health, or a potion of millet and baobab fruit are offered to increase the town's fertility. After 10 kilometers of hiking up and down the mountain we stopped exhausted for lunch, all 16 of us passing out on concrete slabs immediately afterward. We woke ourselves up for another 5k walk through the thick sand to our hotel. The church behind us was having their service - singing and dancing for hours. We slept on the hotel roof, freezing in the desert air.

The next day, despite our aching legs and blistering feet we headed out again. We began to feel better as we climbed, breathing the clean air. After passing a few villages on the way we reached the old Telem villages, which are roundish irregular stone dwellings carved into the side of the mountain. Its no wonder that the Dogon tribe, who overtook the Telems, believed that the Telems could fly when looking impossibly high homes on the almost vertical rockcliffs. The Dogon now use those cave-like dwellings as burial places, using rope to lower the bodies from the higher cliffs into the chambers. At last we made it to the mountain peak and sat watching the sweeping panoramic of the plateau below us.

Incredible. But I can't wait to get back to my village. I miss my home.

Bamako blues

So we've been here at the training center for two weeks for our in-service training, and gnawing our hands off. The excitement of being with 60 Americans all day for two weeks quickly wore off as we realized with horror that there was no nap time! Barely even time for even tea between our packed schedule of technical lectures and language classes, field trips and administrative sessions designed to remind us that we are, in the end, owned by the government. But at nights we pitch a fire, and hopefully someone pulls out a guitar and harmonica as we sing soulful recreations of Beyonce and Outkast to the drum of an upside down bucket. Or maybe we spark up the hookah and toast some pumpernickel bread using a rake (we all could sure use the fiber), enjoying the comraderie of people who are just slightly crazy enough to live in a mud hut for two years in West Africa.
Luckily I've gotten out of the walls of the Training Center into Bamako a few times, where we dance feeling uncomfortably modest next to the blue eyeshadowed Malian prostitutes. Finally we head home to the sound of the 5am call to prayer, waking up at 9am to grab ice cream before heading back to sessions.
Even though I never felt the urge to see him in the US, a bunch of us decided to go to the Sean Paul concert, a fundraiser for Malaria prevention. It turns out Sean Paul is as bad in Mali as he is in the States. As he finally stepped on stage about 4hours after his promised arrival, the Gendarmes started to grow anxious looking at the rowdy crowd, and started to push us all. We moved like cattle, and in the rush I lost one of my shoes. Thankfully I found another on the ground, albeit an inch lower, and we hobbled our way to the exit right as a chair was thrown. A wise exit, and a warning never again to go to a big concert here.
And so as IST comes to an end, off I go to hike through Dogon country among the villages carved into the mountains.

A moveable feast

While short, this week at site was chockfull of excitement. I came at the start of Seliba (Tabaski), a Muslim holiday celebrating Abrahams sacrifice of a ram instead of his son Ishmael (yes, the Koran places Ishmael, not Issac, in the knife's path - an interesting deviation from the Torah). In the days right before seliba, herds of goats and sheeps seemed to appear out of thin air: blocking the streets of the teeming markets, nipping at my feet on the bus ride to village, trying their best to get into my yard by gnawing my wood gate. As I walked into my host family's concession, the slaughter was already beginning. On a tarp over the sand I watched as the goat was killed, skinned and cut into intricate shapes, taking it apart with surgical precision. I'll spare you the details. Over the next two days I ate a myriad of interesting, seemingly inpalatable body parts. Out came entrails flavored with Maggi, tounge, pancreas and lung (?) amid peanut sauce and potatos, a very gluey hoof, and a majestic bowl full of grilled goat's head. The last was (alarmingly) delicious. Grotesque, yes. But there is some beauty to this idea of sacrifice, a long forgotten acknowledgement of our need to kill these beasts for our own life. Until now I never quite grasped the disconnect that is present in cultures where access to proteins and micronutrients is a daily given. When most of the villagers can afford meat only every other week, if that, each part of that animal becomes an opportunity for their children to grow strong (cue the Lion King's Circle of Life). Yes, here even the gluey hoof is useful and worthy of attention, and damn good protein. Killing with love.

The rest of my time was spent in the usual way. Mornings at the health center weighing babies, painting murals, or just chatting with the patients, health workers, or the usual characters that just, well, hang out. Afternoons hiding from the sun, reading or listening to the BBC on my shortwave radio, getting water, etc. Since the cold season is approaching (despite the 90 degree afternoons), in the evenings everyone huddles around the bonfires pitted in the middle of the yard, drinking their tea and listening to radio. The hilarity has been lost on me as my body temperature has apparently switched to Sub-Saharan mode. The other day, shivering in my sweatshirt, I looked at my thermometer, which was at an embarrasing 65 degrees. I am sure it is snowing in New York by now. I can't really understand that.

The other night, as I headed to my hut for my usual 9am bedtime (what else is there to do with no electricity?) I heard drums rumbling somewhere in the dark village. The next day the beating started again, and I finally discovered the donkiliyoro (dancing place), where the young village women and some men were gathered in a circle in celebration of an engagement. The women were feverously dancing in front of the three drummers, their hands thrown up behind their back and their torsos bent - birds of paradise in vibrant flower prints. The three men pounded their djambes (drums) with "snares" made of pieces of scrap metal, in front of a small bonfire which softened the drum, creating a deep bellowing sound. Soon, almost on cue, the three women would move out and a new group of girls would twirl in, dancing synchronously as the crowd began a call and response song. They danced and sang with such enviable ownership. This culture, these traditions are not the dusty cliche of their grandparents. It is theirs and they create it with each village dance, with the rhythms that have been drummed for centuries. The headwraps flew and panye (wrap skirts) adjustments were made as the party raged on through the night. I went back to my hut around 10pm, finally falling asleep to the rhythmic beats of the drums.

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.

Trip to the Banana groves

 
 
 
 

Yesterday was another torrential rainstorm. Fanta grabbed me with words of "old woman" and "fever," and we went to see the old dying woman. We met up with Sangare, the doctor, who gave the unsuprising diagnosis - malaria - which is literally ravaging our village this time of year during the rainy season. We found her under bright purple sheets sown with green flowers, her shallow breaths contrasting with the feverent pumping rain. When it died down for a moment, she got up and walked, shakily gripping the walls as we sat shelling peanuts. As she reached the nyegen she looked back vacantly as the wind played games with her green headwrap. Her grip on the mud wall seemed to teeter between worlds, her stare exhausted and vacant. The next day I went out to the peanut fields with Fanta and a few other women. Our hands and heads and backs were filled with gourd bowls, radios, water jugs and little girls. We sat under a tree and pulled the peanuts from the roots as we exchanged warm but confused sentiments about farming and the village. Our picinic lunch of fresh sweet milk with millet and cut cucumber was refreshing, and I finally felt welome into this community of strong women, even though they make constantly make fun of my smooth uncalloused hands and lack of a husband. We left as again the black clouds rolled in, and ran the last half kilometer to the village as the rain slowly crept up on our heads.

I returned after the fields to give my blessings to the old woman, and then went to sit with Nasira as she cooked dinner - peanut sauce and to (ground millet patties) over a mud fire pit. The next morning the old woman had died. Fanta had no tears as she told me - she went on pounding millet. Of course, she had eleven children, another wife and a husband to feed.