Meditations on getting my luggage and other things that make me smile

So yesterday and today were amazingly good day for multiple reasons.

First things first - MY LUGGAGE CAME! This is an ironic gift in that I had actually just recently convinced myself that I could actually just survive off of the one pair of shorts (one mine, one borrowed) and used Malian t-shirts all summer. It was actually becoming quite nice - I knew exactly which cargo pocket contained what essential tool (extra glasses, wallet, water purification tablets, etc.), just like a travelling suitcase. Oh well. A minor inconvenience for the tradeoff of clean clothes.

As of yesterday, I have moved to my new (and permanent) homestay with the family of Modibo Niang, MHOP's Malian Co-director. I am living with Cari for another two weeks then she'll head off to live with Siriki and I'll live with Katie, my co-coordinator for health programming. As described earlier, this homestay happens to be the more comfortable of the two, though the room is relatively small and is for two people. Despite this fact, having the mango shade and being approximately 15 minutes from the internet cafe is totally worth it. To give you an idea of Sikoro, here is what I see when I walk out the door:


(By the way before I start, I just want to point out that I started to write this and went to visit the door to find out exactly what I see and when I returned to write, Mama asked me if I found what I was looking for, having no idea why I was over there. When I told her, she insisted that someone take me on a tour of the marche and the block so I would have better writing material. That's Malian hospitality for you!)

The door is a galvanized steel, but you can't tell because it's been nicely painted gray against the whitish walls of the courtyard. This clean brightness becomes immediately apparent when you open the door and are greeted with the ruddy powder's glow on the road outside. Across the way about twenty feet or so is a small shack made of aluminum siding and aged wood planks - a radio is blaring something about So-and-so Coulibaly and this lanky man is sprawled out on bench, not extremely concerned about attracting customers to buy whatever it is he's selling. It's hard to tell since it's packed away in second- and third-hand boxes from objects that were removed long ago, but he seems to know and so does everyone else. To either side is more road with scattered piles of broken cinder blocks, the sides lined with the dirtied white walls of other houses. To the right, more neighborhood. To the left, down about fifty feet, is the main road leading deeper into Sikoro. At the corner is a small group of women in the morning sun, each one hunched over a brightly colored basket, deliberately but casually washing clothes, talking and laughing together. At this corner, you can either continue walking up Sikoro's hill into the heart of the neighborhood or turn left into the marche.

The marche is a madhouse, in short. The entire place is only about 200 feet long, but there must be at least 50 stores on each side lining the street. Most sell sad little vegetables of sorts, a few sell dried fish and fruits, maybe a large stack of dried herbal leaves or a baggie of spices. Everything is lined up on small makeshift tabletops - old crates, wooden planks - usually covered by an umbrella of sorts. This scene extends at least 15 carts deep, though I have yet to explore the interior. Vendors don't have to sell their food to you, really - this is the only place to get fresh vegetables that I know of so far and everyone needs to feed their families. I've seen more zaban fruits and mangos, medium-sized piles of okra pods, both cut and whole. The cut okra pods look like baby starfruit slices, but they dry so quickly in the incredibly hot sun, they almost look more like potpourri than food. There is also a standard assortment of desiccated fish heads, still peppered with greedy flies. In the background, there is lot of Bambara chatter going on, ranging from standard greeting and bargaining to vendors talking to pass time to the typical cries of "Toubabou!" Everyone who is shopping tends to line the side of the streets, since motorcycles and cars are forever trying to forge their way through the 8-food wide corridor of customers. Most of them honk and maintain speed without any concern for whether you actually move or not, so it's best to stay right up against the storefronts.

On the other end of the market, the street opens back up and across a small, flat 10-foot bridge is the rest of the stores. An internet cafe store, a small pharmacy, even a relatively large bakery, though it's interior is still being built. Beyond this is no longer Sikoro but the road back to l'Hippodrome, where I was before.

One part of the transition from l'Hippodrome (a richer area of Bamako) to Sikoroni has been the loss of a shower, which is welcome. My new bathroom is a small open room with a hole one side for the toilet and you just bring in a bucket. You just cup your hands to throw water on yourself, lather up, and do your best to scrub down. In all honesty, it takes much more patience than a shower and a bit more time, if you actually try to use soap instead of just getting wet (sounds a lot like my early childhood dream), but the repetition is actually pleasantly meditative. Yesterday we had our first group Bambara lesson with our teacher Doudou. He is a brilliant man who works to teach Bambara to Peace Corps volunteers year-round outside of Bamako and he speaks not only impeccable French and Bambara, but also quite decent English. It's strange to have the lesson conducted in three languages, but also quite nice. I actually started finding it easier to take notes in French than English after a bit of trying. In all honesty, he is the most ambitious and confident language teacher I have ever and I feel confident I will be able to speak decent Bambara by the time I leave (just in time, right?). In the meantime, it is quite nice to have a confident response to "Toubabou!" of:


"Initile, ce! Initche! ka kene? Imuso? I denw?" "Good afternoon, mister! Thanks for asking! How are you doing? And your wife? Your children?"


That shuts most of them up. And those who just respond back in faster Bambara.... well, I can always run away!

Today we had a delicious mango breakfast with one the family (29 children with co-wives at last count...) of one of the community health action group (CHAG) workers - Aminata Keita. These workers are the people I will be training all summer, so it was great to meet one of them. She lives in one of the far corners of Sikoroni that is primarily inhabited by the Dogon people. They are known for living in the cliffs and true to form, her house was a baby hike up what may be the tallest of Bamako's few hills. I have to say, from her house, the view of Bamako was absolutely stunning. You could see the market at Sikoroni where I live, the soccer field and trash dump where the future MHOP clinic is going to be built, and l'Hippodrome, all at once. It was quite stunning.

To show our gratitude for Ami(nata) Keita and her family, we picked up 17 amazingly ripe mangos at the local street vendors. Pause. Let me say that again. Seventeen mangos - all ripe, all delicious, all for us to eat and share with the Keita clan. Needless to say, it was an absolutely delicious breakfast. And true to Malian djiatigui form, she insisted we eat (or at least politely sample) lunch before we leave. It was quite a show. We played an empty paint cam drum (Caitlin can drum, girl!) and got a small dance performance from Ami and some of her kids. We also got to climb a humongous and very climbable tree in her courtyard and be monkeys for a bit. In short, it was great.

I have also decided I will take on a few arts and crafts projects this summer. First and foremost, I will be making myself a traditional Malian footstool. They are super handy for crouching down to cook food around the fire (a woman's job here, but if they ever let me, I'm set on trying to help). They're about a food long and maybe eight inches high, made of wood scraps. So, I'm going to the Sikoroni market (tomorrow maybe?) to ask a carpenter to let me apprentice him for a few hours to I can learn the craft (in brief) and make myself a nice stool to sit on. I'm also trying to make myself a hammock. If I can find a feasible way to weave it, I will; however, I am also not above just pirating used cargo netting and giving it a thick underlying rope structure for support. We shall see.

Niang, my Malian brother/daddy is getting married mid-July, so I also need to get myself a traditional boubou (business gown) made for the occasion. This means not only do I need to get a move on with picking out deliciously beautiful fabrics for sarongs and room decorations, but I also need to pick up a pangue of textile fabric to be embroidered and tailored. Exciting! Along the same lines, women here usually get henna tattoos (interestingly enough, made with bastardized black hair dye kits, not natural herbs...) before wedding ceremonies and I intend to as well. The Malians love to see Toubabous cross gender norms in fun and friendly ways, like me asking to cook or do my own laundry. So, in that vein, I also plan on spending $5 or so to get an entire henna sleeve on my arm with a partial breast plate to match. It's going to be intense - and hilarious, simultaneously.

Not much else to do today - it's too infuriatingly hot. We tried to go shopping for fans at the big marketplace, but most vendors who can afford to sell those things close at noon on Sunday, so the voyage yielded only two new foam mattresses. Today is the sort of day where you can take as many bucket showers as you want and never be cool and drink as many gallons of water as possible and still not pee - the only thing we have done today besides breakfast is SWEAT. Along those lines, time for another bucket shower. I'm drenched.


P.S. I find it necessary to share that one of the djatigui guidelines is to always provide more food than your guest can eat (it's impolite to eat all that is offered since it shows they are poor hosts to not provide enough), but between all of the offerings we've had, Niang has noticed my insatiable appetite and taken to calling me his gourmand (food-lover, to be polite). Along these lines, when Caitlin tried to relate this comment to a traditional Malian dance about shaking your rear end that literally translates as "fat ass", I received a new nickname.


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