I have arrived in Mali! I am Boukari, like the dust that is swept up before a storm. I leave your teeth and hair gritty. Tubaniso (where I spent my first four days, and where I'm posting this from now) is Malian for Summer Camp. It is 4H camp and freshman year orientation and RA Training all in one. I sat in classes with my 65 nbf (new best friends). I picked out my first Peace Corps husband. I bought myself a new towel. The husband bit is a joke, you know.
Then, with only an hour-long Bambara lesson, I actually went to Mali. Outside of Tubaniso (literally: house of the dove), there's barely any toilet paper (although I had a secret roll, which was glorious while it lasted). Why not, you say? Well when your toilet is open to the sun, the stars, and the rain... your toilet paper is doomed to be mush in the rainy season. That's now, by the way, the rainy season. I know this about toilet paper because we lost a roll that way in my nyegen in T-so. Toilet paper is remarkably fragile.
But enough nyegen talk. More about the fabulous life of the daughter of a Dugutigi. Since I live with the cheif of our village, I get TV and electric lights from a generator every night with half the village. If watching Ninja Americaine and Malian soap opera wasn't enough, I have a friend in my village who studies English. He's not fluent yet, but we get by.
Let me assure you, however, that speaking the same language doesn't mean that we understand one another. He can speak English well enough to boss me around. "Come here. Do this. Sit here. Eat this. Say this. Don't do that...." Hi. I'll be your life-sized Barbie doll, complete with engineering degree. All I can do in Bambara is greet people and find out the names of things (which isn't bad when you consider that like 25% of Malian conversation is greeting people).
I get frustrated sometimes. I've only been studying Bambara for a week and a half, but I feel like I'm behind already. I have a cell phone, but getting service and charging it are not always sure bets. Check facebook or email me if you want the number. It's free for me to receive calls. Of course, it's probably not free for you to call Mali, but my mother managed it already, using Skype.
But right now, I'm back at T-so, and I'm going to go eat an actually nutritious meal and take a real shower where water really falls from above me and indulge in other luxuries of Ameriki-centric space. I love you all, and I hope you're doing well!
Hi lady!!! Hope you are well and having a blast! I am trying to update our blog often as well, but I wanted to know how to connect to yours? I am still figuring out all the little quirks :) we are at:
ReplyDeletechiapas-southoftheborder.blogspot.com
Can't wait to hear about all of your adventures! :) xoxo
Ahh, how exciting!! :D Bummer about the toilet paper; should I ask what you have to use, instead? How big is the village you're living in? Is it easier to learn Bambara because you know french?
ReplyDeleteHey Sarah! Awesome to hear from you! I am 'following' your blog now, so I can keep track of when you update it. I can't wait to see more of your gorgeous photos.
ReplyDeleteHey Alice! What we use instead is a lot of water and our left hands (which we Americans always wash with soap and water afterward, a concept totally foreign to Malians!). It sounds uncomfortable, and it certainly has been requiring some adjustment, but I actually feel a little cleaner. It's like a little shower every time I go to the bathroom, and thanks to a little bout of "Mr. D" as we call it in PC Mali, I got to experience that particular burst of freshness like 10 times yesterday. Since we were back at T-So, I was using toilet paper, but as the day wore on, I discovered that Malian toilet paper is pretty rough, and I'm better off with the wash'n'go method. I know, that was probably TMI. Moving on. My homestay village (which isn't my permanent site yet, I move there in September, I don't know where it is yet) is on the order of 1000 people, and it's a fairly orderly little place because the village moved there from a site closer to the river that got flooded out too many times. As it turns out, Bambara has very little in common with french in basic vocabulary BUT Bambara (or Bamanankan as they call it IN Bambara) is a completely untechnical language. Most of the technical terms I'll be using will have to be borrowed from French or smashed together from descriptive Bambara words. My favorite example of this so far is the word yiriden, which means fruit. It's made of two words: yiri meaning tree, and den meaning baby or young. So literally, fruit are tree babies! I don't know, it cracked me up. Anyway, there are bugs of every description attacking my computer, so I'm out. I'll be back online in another 10 days. Maybe I'll have something more exciting to write about then.
Be well! Peace!