Saturday, 6/21

The first hints of the rainy season are starting to appear and I couldn’t be happier. I have gotten used to sleeping outside since it is so ridiculously hot inside of our tiny tin box room during the night. However, last night, we were awakened at 3AM or so to a Wizard of Oz-worthy dust storm which was then followed by one of the most intense rainstorms I’ve ever witnessed. We woke up immediately and drowsily sought shelter in our little oven of a room, leaving the door cracked just a little bit for a breeze; however, the wind immediately ripped it open again and slammed incessantly against the outside wall until I had to clumsily try to get back out of my mosquito net and lock it. Closing the window an door made for an interesting sensory experience since all that was left was the darkness, the smell of wet earth, and the eerily incessant pounding of rain all around us. Truly intense.


When we woke up in the morning we were pleasantly surprised to find that everything was coated in a fine layer of red dust and the periphery of the room was still a little wet. Ironically, when we went outside, where we had expected to find mudslides and overturned motorcyclists ambling around screaming for medical attention, we found our family starting to cook lunch like they always do and the entire ground was already mostly dry. Hrmph! At least WE thought it was a big deal. I suppose it’s just par for the course for the Malian rainy season – that explains why the Wizard of Oz bombed in domestic box offices…


So if memory serves, I think I initially praised Malian food. I would like to modify that statement. Malian food is good when the taste is new and it’s the first lovingly prepared food you have had in three days of travel. I must admit, it is starting to get a bit old. Malian food really only consists of rice or (rarely) couscous with five different sauces, most of which are rich in palm oil (read: red liquid fatty death juice). The food is fun to eat with your hands, but even that does get a little old after a while, especially when a co-worked gets amoebas and you’re still eating out of the same plate (I love you, Cari and the ‘mebes!). Most sauces are also either distinctly fishy (remember the rotting fish heads from the market?) or make a clear reference to boogers, owing to their high mashed okra pod content. They are all edible and definitely provide sustenance, but it is also nice to have comfort foods sometime too.


On that note, we have started cooking for ourselves three nights a week. The first night was pasta with what turned out to be a delicious red sauce made from the ripest tomatoes, onions, and garlic we could find in the market. Surprisingly, bags of pasta here are easy to find, even though no one really eats it in the way we are used to. We have also made omelet sandwiches which are far less greasy and much more delicious than the ones that street vendors sell. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I have BREAKING NEWS: liquid dairy products DO exist in Mali – THANK G-D! Up until recently, my dairy experience here has consisted of powdered milk in my morning rice and the occasional ice cream from the Malian-American yup-yup café in the nice part of town. However, I just discovered that they sell decently sized bags of flavored Yoplait yogurts in most boutiques and I have to be frank: I almost cried with relief. It is the closest I have come to heaven thus far in Mali (though I anticipate future contenders).


Re: clothing, I also have good news: my boubou is almost ready. A boubou is a traditional knee-length man-dress that every Malian man owns for business functions. I found this beautiful royal blue/turquoise/mustard/sienna fabric in the marketplace that is batik/screenprinted and I’m having it cut, tailored, and embroidered with a pair of baggy brown pants for the ridiculously low price of 7000CFA ($15) – gotta love Malian exchange rates. It’s going to be gorgeous and just in time for Niang’s weddng mid-June!


In work news, we had our first meeting with the CHAG (community health action group) to discuss our project’s agenda and they had some valuable insights. They definitely want us to scale up the programs and they want to combine the two individual programs into a single comprehensive effort. We had planned on doing this, but it is ultimately the CHAG’s decision as to who/what/when/where/why. They also made several suggestions for additional diseases to add to the agenda. Specifically, they have noticed a lot of juvenile diarrhea cases and want us to cover that more specifically within the sanitation part of our program. They also wanted to reinforce our malaria education and scale up the program to include obesity-related health concerns (don’t be shocked – palm oil is super fatty and omnipresent in Malian cuisine), fever treatment, and trash-related health concerns. Now we have to compare these issues to their actual prevalence rates in the community and the advice of trained local doctors.


It’s nice to start the work process here so I can stop feeling like a tourist. We have the beginnings of a good foundation for this program and I’m looking forward to more meetings with the important players to flesh it out as we learn more. In the meantime, I need to go tend to my likely malaria-ridden bug bites so I can get some peace.


X Adama X