We're At Peace - An Bε Hεrε La

Can you believe Babi was so little last year?

My project is live! Fund it here, pretty please.



I figured you deserved a peek into how I, personally, am doing.  It's hard to describe exactly.  I'm very happy, with every part of my life.  Of course, I get upset and go off in Bambara at a prantigi every so often.  I cry once in a great while over something stupid like a Peace Corps Response flier or a lecture about greeting at the pump before putting down my bidon.  However, I find that my general happiness is greater than it was even in the states, and more consistent.  My life is segmented into two, really.  There's Ane's life in village, and there's Pilar's life out on the town.

Ane

Bro and Me

Village life is precious, timeless, and always too short.  I love waking up to my cat crying outside my tent.  Jenn, upon leaving, passed me down a two person bug tent which is infinitely superior to the one-man dealie I bought last year.  I unzip a little space, Babi crawls in and curls up by my feet, and I lie back and listen to the sound of women pounding the morning millet across the way.  I'm usually up and dressed by 7, but I almost never get anything done before 9 or so.  Life is slow, gloriously slow here.  I got a dog.  I've been calling him Bro, my little brother.  In the afternoons, as the sun is going down, I'm startled, pleased, and heartily amused to see him silhouetted against the sky standing up on my wall.  He hops up and looks out over the land, doing sentry duty like the good guard dog that he is. Babi hates him passionately.  A month in, and he still blows up like a puffin fish and howls as if I shut his tail in the door every time the dog walks out of the kitchen to check up on what's going on.  Once, when they both wanted food out of the same dish, I saw the dog snap at the cat, but other than that, he's been nothing but casually disinterested.  Babi (who, by the way, is male, oops), continues his campaign of hatred undismayed.

Rache and Me

Long hugs with Rache.  Laughing with her.  Crying with her.  Talking about boys.  Talking about life.  Talking about anything.  Not talking at all.  Without qualifications (eg, Malian, in Africa, since Peace Corps), she is one of my best friends.  Her whole family is made up of such good people, so real and comfortable.  Her mom's house, out on the edge of town, is my oasis whenever I'm feeling out of sorts.  No one there is into that particularly Malian humor that so annoys me if I'm unprepared.  Even when Rache and her brothers are away teaching, and the younger ones are all in school in Koutiala, and the rest of the horde is off where ever they live, Ba (what everyone calls her mom, which is Bambara for... mom) welcomes me with literal open arms like her own child.

Koro, the boy who keeps the cows, and Ama

My lucky talisman is to get blessed by my Ama, my homologue's mom.  Any day I don't greet her, with the ritual stream of blessings that entails, I feel at loose ends and vaguely threatened by unnamed calamity.  I don't even know what a geresogo is or why I'd want God to untie mine, but I 'Amiina!' like I mean it, because I do.  I'm starting to know people's nicknames.  The old-mother is Ama, my homologue is Benogo (akin to Papa), his wife is Bajeni (something like Ma-whitey, maybe).  The third daughter sometimes gets called Koro (Oldie).  The second daughter's name isn't really Nekuru, which I didn't know until March or later!  Nekuru is just something you call 8-12 year old girls, pretty much.  The youngest - Zybie my Zybie!  She's my nison fura - my mood medicine.  I merrily throw my back out tossing her into the air again and again.  I let her yank on my hair as many times as she wants.  I come back from market every week with as much good food as I can carry to give to Bajeni so that she will grow up strong and healthy.  Seeing her smile makes all of it worthwhile every time.  When she sees me and yells, "Ma! Ma! Ane pa!" or her baby approximation thereof, and then runs up to grab my hands in greeting... my heart melts.  Then, Bajeni (babies in Mali calls their moms 'Ma', too), who doesn't click with me like Rache does, but is a close second for best Malian friend, looks up and says, "Who, Ane? Ane's here?" and then goes back to work.  When she's done with whatever she was doing, and Ama is done blessing me, she'll come over and greet me.

Bajeni doesn't mess around.  She's direct - "You didn't come to dinner last night!" or "You sneezed, do you have a cold?" and without being fussy, she takes care of me.  When she can see I'm cranky and tired, she'll give me an out: "You are tired, why don't you go home and lie down?"  Whenever I show up, I get fed.  Whenever I want to go, no problem.  We make weak attempts at bean-eating jokes, and she makes the same demand-jokes that drive me crazy from other people.  From her, they're both actually funny and things that I'm actually willing to fulfill.  When a stranger on the street demands I give him my shirt off my back (literally, this happens fairly often, although usually people just demand money, sometimes they want my clothes, jewelry, phone, bike, etc.), I find it hard to remember it's just a joke and laugh.  Probably, Malians don't realize how pervasive it is, each of them thinks they're being inventive and witty.  Bajeni, on the other hand, says things like, "Come back from market with lots of presents!" after I came home with at least a kilo of veggies from each of the last two markets.  She knows I'm a sucker for Zybie, and I know it, and I know she feeds me every day without being willing to take any kind of payment, so it's easy to laugh and say we have to see how the market goes first, while mentally agreeing wholeheartedly.  Benogo (her husband, my homologue, Sam) is also a baller.  He never stops.  Give him pink ears and a drum and call him the Energizer Bunny.  We haven't been able to do much work lately - funding roadblocks, farming, and my own lack of A-game slowed us down.  Also, some of the households aren't doing their bit of the work that we need to get the latrine slabs installed.  Still, he's always willing to take anything on.  He's got a say in almost everything that gets decided in the village, or so it seems to me.  He listens to me.  He knows how I roll, when I can be teased safely, and what drives me up a wall.

Bajeni laughs at Koro's grumpiness, Zybie is confused

The rest of my village...  they're all my people.  I know them, even if I don't know everyone's names.  They greet me in Minanka.  Sometimes I laugh and answer in that minority language, which is the mother tongue for most in my village.  Sometimes I just pretend I didn't hear them, and answer as if they greeted me in the Bambara that has become second nature to me.  Sometimes I get grumpy, and complain that I've worked so hard to learn Bambara, and now they want me to speak Minanka, too, but they don't know a single English word.  Is that good? I demand.  Grudgingly, they say, "No, no that's not good." Still, they'll greet me in Minanka the next time they see me again.  When I answer it back, they all love it.  Better to chance the lecture and get to hear the white girl speaking their real language than to stick to boring old Bambara any day.  Who knows? Maybe in my second year I'll advance in Minanka beyond simple greetings and things to yell at children (eg, Sit down! Go home!).




Pilar

The road out from my site

I've been back and forth so much lately that I feel like I'm never at site.  People say that I would know if I were really not at site enough.  I don't think my friends at site or my homologue think I'm gone too much.  Mostly, I am just missing the comfort of being home and the relaxing breathing space that the village is for me.  Since March, I've been to Bamako a couple of times, down to Sikasso more than twice, I'm always going out to San, and I even went to Manatali of hydro-electric hippo fame for the Fourth of July.

Me and Jenn at WAIST in February

Volunteers from my year (Risky Business-ers), the year before (HBO-ers) a few delightful 3rd-years from the Breakfast Club-ers, and already some of the yet-unnamed new crop of volunteers have become my fast friends.  We Pants-Off-Dance-Off in San (no wonder I go so often, right?).  We have deep conversations or veg out watching TV shows in the Bamako Stage House.  We use dark magic tricks to create real delicious food in Sikasso.  Every where I go, I find myself bonding with my fellow volunteers and being happier to see them.  Not that I was ever unhappy to see them, mind you, just that I'm even fonder of them now than before.  Of course, now that I'm finally getting to know the HBO-ers and Breakfast Clubbers, they're leaving me.  Our house-mommy in Koutiala left ages ago in June with her fiancee.  A witty friend who writes novels was out right after Manantali in July.  At the beginning of this month, Zac and Jenn closed their services the same week, robbing me of two out of three of my closest site buddies.  I only get to keep the third until December, too!  But I've hardly had time to feel lonely with all the running around I'm doing.  I barely have time to greet, get the termites off my walls, and get the grass out of my yard (each of those takes at least a day, mind you!) in village before I'm packing up to take another trip.

Grumpiest cat ever watching the sun set