23.75 days later

“We don't use sunscreen; we're already burnt!”

“I be ji taa komi Ameriki muso.” You take water like an American woman. She was carrying the pail by the handle on her side instead of carrying it on her head. They thought it was pretty funny.

So I have a list of about 30 things I could blog about, but I'm only in Sikasso for today and tomorrow morning so I'm sorry ahead of time if it makes no sense or is long and rambling. And has no coherent order. I have been at my site for 24 days so there is a lot to write about.
First of all, in order to get to where I sit right now, there were several routes I could have taken. The route I took involved me getting up at 5 am and leaving my village as soon as the sun came up at 555. I biked the 45 or 50 km into Sikasso. The first few miles were spent biking to the main road because my village is not on the main road. That was the worst because the dirt roads are terrible and were a bit muddy because it rained yesterday. Once I hit the main though it went pretty quickly. I stopped once to hide out underneath a house because it started pouring about 12 km from Sikasso. I had a lovely chat with 5 members of the military in charge of the toll booth of sorts. They were really nice and even gave me a tarp to cover up my bag (don't worry; everything was already wrapped in three or four ziploc bags anyways). Then, I probably broke three rules of the road cutting across a road to ask two more military members as to where the bureau is. He told me I made an infraction, and I said, I'm sorry. But could you tell me where the bureau is? And he was nice as pie. Anyways. I survived, and I'm pretty impressed because it only took my 3 hours to get here, including the 20 minutes spent under the hangar. I'm taking public transport out tomorrow though because the hills going back are much worse than the hills coming in. Eventually I will work up to biking both ways.

Cooking
The first crisis (not a real crisis, just an annoyance, but I said crisis for emphasis (I realize with family reading this they are going to over exaggerate every “terrible” thing that occurs.))occurred the day I arrived at site. Apparently we were supposed to grab a rubber tube to connect our gas tank to our little camping grill. I was the first person to pick up my stove though so I think it was just a matter of miscommunication in the process. The people who were installing me could have bought a new rubber tube in Sikasso and given it to me when they installed others who live nearby. However, with Ramadan ending very soon, they wanted to get everyone installed and didn't have time to drop off the tube. The end results was that I could only cook with this teeny tiny little stove thing (might add a photo if I remember) and coal when I chose to cook. For the most part I just ate what my host mom cooked. It was much better this time around. I think they realized that I do not enjoy them cooking with shea as an oil base alternative (you know, shea butter). The end result is that in the past 24 days I have eaten moni (millet and water porridge I doctor with powdered milk and sugar) or siri (rice and water porridge, again doctored up) every morning for breakfast, potatoes or rice everyday for lunch, and rice and to (millet) every night for dinner. I just ate an egg sandwich. I really thought it would be amazing, but all I have is a belly ache now. Maybe a hamburger tonight will do the trick. Really though, I don't mind the food right now.
I did manage to make some amazing macaroni and cheese with the help of butter, powedered milk, garlic, and vache qui rit (cow that laughs, read: laughing cow cheese). It's actually pretty fantastic; definitely rivals boxed mac and cheese. I also made french fries, but I don't think I have the oil to fry ratio right quite yet and there wasn't enough heat to really get the oil going. With a little bit of ketchup though, it was also pretty great. I wish I could say that the stove is going to improve my situation, but there aren't a lot of foods to choose from, although I am looking forward to making pancakes, tuna sandwiches, and whatever type of Mexican dish I can. One of the games PCVs play is to think of their dream food for an entire day, including appetizers, entrees, and desert. I'm not there yet though (not desperate enough for good food I mean) so I'll save it for another blog post.

Goals
I made a whole bunch of goals I wanted to accomplish during this first three months. They were small things, like going out and greeting people in my village , painting my room, studying language, visiting the offices in the village, finding my way around to other villages, etc. I've accomplished most of the goals already so that is pretty great. One of my goals was to wear a head wrap each day. Most women do. I thought it would be good for lots of reasons. It gains you more respect, it covers up the frizz (although it still manages to escape), etc. I'm not going to though, at least for the time being, because it gives me the worst headaches so bah humbug. There is still a lot I can do for the next two months though.

Projects
We can't do actual projects, but we can start doing a needs assessment and brainstorm ideas. I was finally able to meet with the mayor (he is my host dad but I don't want to talk business during family time when I see him at night) at his office. (Note for my grandma; I have a host family that I can always go to when I need their help. In fact, I live right next door to them At no point would I ever live in the same house as them (nor would I want to). As far as I can tell, without jinxing myself, I am completely safe in my village. Violence does not exist) I showed up at 8 and we talked business starting at 1030. I spent the first thirty minutes watching them bring chairs outside, greeting one another, and finding someone in a nearby concession to give them charcoal to make tea. Then we made tea. Making tea is super important in Mali, if you haven't picked up on that yet. The problem is that the man at the mayor's office who makes tea, is quite possible the slowest tea maker ever. I see the value in spending an hour making tea, but it took him 90 minutes to make the first round of tea, and you make three rounds. Let me interject on this topic to explain tea making.

Making Tea
First you have to gather all of the materials. This includes two baradas (small tea pots), two weres (glasses that can most easily be described as shot glasses), one aseti (plate), one furune (stove), finfin (charcoal), te (tea), sukaro (sugar). So you put about three weres worth of water in the barada and put it on the charoal and let it cook for 12 minutes, according to my Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator. Next you pour the tea from the barada to the were back to the barada a couple of times. Then you add a full were of sugar into the yet unused barada and pour the tea into the same barada. Then you pour it back and forth from were to barada again, because frankly that is a lot of sugar for such a small amount of water. Then you stick this second barada on the finfin (does your head hurt from looking for the meaning of the words yet?) and let it cook for a few more minutes. Finally, you pour the tea back and forth from cup to tea pot. There is a special art to this in that they pour the tea about a foot above the cup so that it makes a really nice foam. The better the foam, the better the tea maker they think. Anyways. You then clean the weres out (ie pour water in them) and serve the tea. There are usually 5-8 people drinking so you pour the tea accordingly. While this is happening, you have already poured three more weres of water in the barada with the tea leaves and put it on the charcoal. Like I mentioned, you serve three rounds of tea. It is really good stuff, but you can bet I brush my teeth super well at night.

Projects
So back to projects. He spent all that time making tea, pouring it from barada to were so many times that I imagined myself taking the barada and were and throwing them in the corn field next to me and then throwing the furune (stove) with charcoals next while the entire village burned to pieces. Ok, I didn't really imagine that, but it was so frustrating to watch.
At any rate, I finally asked the mayor if we could talk and motioned towards my folder. We talked about the major players of the village, that is, the leaders of the different associations in my village. Then we talked about literacy centers in my village, or the lack there of. They were really interested in this project, as am I. It is the project I was hoping most to do as part of the Education Sector.
I am, however, still sorting through what happened next. They invited me to a meeting that Friday at the mayor's office (supposed to start at 8, but officially started at 1015 with people still trickling in due to tea making and general tardiness) to discuss the upcoming school year, which starts this coming week. The mayor and general secretary argued with the dugutigis (village chiefs) of those in my commune about how much money each village would give per child in the classroom.
Then the mayor introduced me, everyone stared, I said, “Aw ni sogoma” (Good morning) and he began to talk about how I was going to work with the women to start a literacy center. There were 6 or 7 women who were representatives from the different villages for the Women's Association. They said they would like to work with me and that was that. They all headed outside so I slipped out of a side door to say hello to them personally. I asked when they met, and they told me Fridays from 8 to 9. I thought this was strange because my homologue told me that they usually meet once a week. I thought something strange was going on, but I just played nice and said I was excited to see them in a week.
What I have pieced together so far is that the women think we are going to begin literacy courses this Friday. What I had to explain to my homologue, and will explain to the mayor on Monday, is that it cannot start this Friday. First because I can't start projects. Second, because I have no idea what all of the logistics are. I do know that the women who are going to be teachers need to be identified. They need to receive some teacher training to learn how to teach literacy to adults. This requires funding from somewhere yet unknown (we have In Service Training in December, after our three months, to learn about these things, which is one of many reasons as to why we cannot start projects until then). We need books for the women to study with. Oh, a place to study might be nice, right? And students might be nice as well. We will need to coordinate when the women can study, and how to make groups so each teacher can have a set of students. I don't know if the teachers will expect to receive money for their time, and if they do, we will have to decide where the money will come from. As you can see, there is a lot that needs to be done before we can begin classes. I told my homologue that what we can start doing is making a list of interested women who would like to teach and a list of those who would like to study. In the mean time though, there isn't a lot we can do.
Although we can't start right now, I am really impressed at how quickly this came together. Basically, I was expecting this to take the first year of my time here to work to organize, and even then, I was skeptical about how successful it would be. The women are very busy with everyday chores and organizing people can be difficult when you are speaking another language and have to visit people at home, if they are at home, to coordinate anything. I am glad they are so excited, and I think the Women's Association is going to be a really great resource for me. I just hope that they stay excited and patient while we work through the logistics of it all. It's a really good start for having had a 30 minute convo with the mayor though. I'll keep you posted.

CESCOM
So I know what that stands for, but not at this exact moment. What I do know is that it is the health center. It seems to be fairly nice by the standards of health centers here. They weigh babies once a week and they invited me to come and help. There have been volunteers in my village before, and apparently they helped with baby weighings, and vaccinations, but I'm not interested in asking them how they pulled that off with liability issues, nor do I want to give vaccinations. Weighing babies is interesting here. I didn't help the first time, just watched. They have some rope tied around a beam of the hangar they sit under. Then they have a hanging scale (like something you see in a grocery store) they hook to the rope. Next, they stick the baby in this sack-like thing that looks like one of those baby swings at parks but is made out of cloth material. Whatever this thing is called has a big strap on it that they hook to the scale, and voila, baby weighed. How do they weigh babies in the States? There has to be an easier way.
At any rate, I was really happy to know all of the words they were saying to me, but then the doctor invited me into his office and let me watch him visit patients. I wish I had not seen some of those illnesses. I also did not understand the words he was saying because they were french, and probably not illnesses you and I hear much about these days.

School Dance
One evening after talking to Chris, I saw some older boys playing soccer so I went over to see what it was all about. The director of the school was there, and he pointed towards a classroom they had taken all of the desks out of and told me they were having a school dance that night. I asked if I could come check it out since it was a school function and all. He said, of course I could come.
Wow. Those kids dance. They dance in a way I have never before seen a person of any age dance. They move their legs as fast as they can, and, well, I just can't describe it. When they weren't dancing, they were staring at me. Large groups of kids 12 and under standing around me, just staring. They all got really shy when I asked them their names or otherwise attempted to make conversation with them. It was super awkward and I left after about an hour. The real bummer is that all of those kids are leaving to go back home. They were visiting to help family plant for the year, but go home for school. This means that other kids are returning home from other villages. New kids. Kids who have not seen me before. Kids who will love to stare at me all over again. Yay...

Integration
I have been wondering what integration even means anymore. I am in my village all the time. I occasionally go for walks and bike rides and greet everyone along the way. I go to the market on market day and I intentionally say hello to every person selling goods and the women who are buying things too. When I check my phone (I have to walk about ten minutes to get to a place that has service in my site), I say hello to everyone. When I go out for a walk, people yell my name (Asetou these days) and smile to see me. They know I am here and they know my name. I don't know if that is what integration is. I thought I knew what integration was, but now I am rethinking what it means for me. My village is a decent size so I don't think I will know everyone's name, though I will probably come to know everyone's faces. I don't have friends in my village, and am not sure who I would be friends with. I don't want to be friends with boys my age because it sends the wrong message, but the girls my age are married with babies already and can't relate much. It will happen eventually. If nothing else, I will have people I spend a lot of time with (educators, homologue, mayor's office) so I will stay busy. Here business and pleasure are one in the same. The integration thing is just a thought to consider.

Family
My new host family is much different than my old host family. At first, nobody would talk to me. The big problem is language. My family speaks Samogo when they are just sitting around chit chatting, as does most of the rest of my village, which is annoying for a non Samogo speaker. There was about one whole week where people said close to nothing to me and I said close to nothing to them. Then, one night, my homologue came to my host family's house and I made a point to speak to hiim in Bambara for a few phrases and then switched to French. You could see the look of shock on his face to see that I could speak, and that I could speak in two languages he understands even. (He was really shocked when I did the interview with him in French. At one point he stopped and just said, Asetou, you can speak French well.) Since then, things have gotten better. They speak to me a bit more often (read, three or four times per night), and I understand a bit more often, but it is slowly working. They still speak Samogo all the time though.

BBC
There is very little in village that is better than listening to BBC on the radio. They do a focus on Africa segment in the morning and again in the afternoon so it's almost nice to hear about places near me. I say almost nice because they rarely have good things to say about things going on here, though they rarely have good things to say about anything going on in the world so I don't take offense.
They have only mentioned Mali twice by my count, though I don't listen everyday. I was surprised that they didn't mention the 50th anniversary of independence. They kept talking about Nigeria's 50th yesterday because of troubles going on there. Did you know there are something like 17 countries celebrating their 50th year of independence this year? I think people have really negative views of Africa, but just think about what you would expect a country to look like after having only 50 years of independence in a world that has had 100s of years to develop while your country has been repressed by those other developing countries. Just think about it.

50th Anniversary
The 50th was on the 22nd. The party started on the night of the 21st though. One of my host family members took me over to the party. Everyone was dancing, but this time I knew what to expect because the party at the school was a few nights before. They partied until probably 5am; I only know this because I could hear the music playing all night.
The next morning was really interesting. We went to the school, they lifted the flag and the school children sang a song. Then we all moved over to an area where they had chairs and benches. These men came in and played xylophones and drums while others sang and danced. Men wearing masks came out and danced, other men were shooting guns as part of the show. I can't describe it at all. All I can say is that is was one of the few moments where I have said, “Wow. I'm in Africa.” I could say it a million times a day, but there isn't a lot that surprises me at this point, but that was quite a show. People kept asking if I was going to record the show, but I didn't have my camera. Next year though.

Painting
Yeah, I painted my house! Well, 2.33 walls of my house, but whatever. I ran out of paint. I don't know when I will be able to finish. It isn't a matter of money so much as it is a matter of getting it to my site by bike. I need to buy food and my bag was already stuffed when I got in. I have my bookbag to fill, but it becomes a lot to carry, especially when I have my box with my stove in it to take as well.

Heat
It isn't too bad. I don't typical break a sweat during the day, though the past week has been warmer. I even get cold in the evenings and have to bundle up in my blanket at night. Something tells me hot season is still going to suck though.

Biking
I have obviously biked a bit lately. I was able to visit a larger village near mine for market day. I hope that it can be a place to meet with other volunteers from time to time. Just having a couple of hours in the morning to spend with another volunteer is really nice. I went on that adventure with my homologue. In the future I will have to take a different route because the route he takes requires me to pass through water, and I shouldn't because of schisto that is in the water. I'll let you look that one up on your own. Anyways, I will have to go the long route in the future, which is a lot of extra kilometers, but not having schisto would be great.
I also went on another adventure to visit another volunteer in a village close to mine. He was my site buddy during site visit. My homologue showed me which road to take so I left one morning. I decided to go on market day because I knew there would be a lot of people from my village and the villages between ours would be going to his site and could give me directions. It was a good choice too. My homologue made it seem like the road went directly to his village. Wrong. There were probably 15 forks in the road going all over the place. Fortunately there was a young boy watching over animals at every fork in the road.
I had some difficult in one village. There were some women fetching water. I asked what village I was in, and they told me it was my friend's village so I asked if they knew him. They said yes, but then the woman starting touching herself and motioning that my friend was a woman. That was when I knew we were really on a different track. She insisted I come and see my friend who turned out to be a woman about 50 years old. I told her that unfortunately that was not my friend. They took me to see some other guy and I told him the exact same things- the village I was going to and who I was looking for. He repeated what I said word for word to the woman, the same words I had said to her, and she said something similar to, “Ok” and walked me outside of the concession and told me to follow the road I was already on. Wow. But I arrived, and luckily his girlfriend was visiting so I got two toubabs for the price of one! Plus, they made some french fries and I even got to eat a tuna sandwich. Going home was another adventure, but I made it before night fall. Not sure when I will do it again though.

Ok
So that is a lot. It doesn't really describe much, but whatever. The past three weeks were especially difficult for me. It was the first time that I had to be on my own for three weeks with nobody to talk to, with the exception of my visit to the volunteer in the village near mine. School has not started. Tutoring has not started. Nobody was inviting me to do anything or go anywhere. I don't mean friends wise. I mean that my work partner and my host organization was not inviting me to meetings or inviting me to meet people in the village. I didn't know what was going on or when because nobody told me, but they were surprised when I didn't show up.I seriously considered going home on several occasions because I was worried about ever starting projects, if the work I accomplish would mean enough for me after two years, I was thinking about what I could be doing at home, and I was mentally and emotionally spent.
We were supposed to have language training this entire week, but it was been pushed back. Even so, a good number of us came in to see the city. We didn't all know we would be visiting so it is a nice surprise, even if we are all sitting on our computers right now.
I think things will go better now that school is starting and language tutoring is starting. We have language training in a few more weeks now instead so it gives me something to look forward to. I know when things go on in my village, and I think the mayor will help me find things to do maybe. It is going to be hard off and on, but hopefully I am moving into a period where things are a bit easier.