Holidays Mali Style

I am not sure how much I have written about the holiday season in my blog so I thought I would give you an overview of the holiday seasons in Mali.

Tabaski

This is a holiday celebrated a certain number of days after Ramadan ends, the time when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunrise, according to the moon, which is similar to how we determine when Easter occurs. At any rate, this is the day when people wear their finest clothes. The kids walk all over the village greeting people and asking for gifts from others in the village. The teachers all go from house to house of the most important people in the village in order to greet them. Everyone visits the mayor's house -my jatigi or host dad- to give him gifts and greet him out of respect. They feast all day long on sheep they sacrifice for religious purposes. My family received so much meat as gifts that we ate it for the rest of the week, which was fantastic because we usually eat meat once a week at most. Most of the time we eat meat only when I return to site and give them a gift (it is traditional to give a gift if you have left the village to travel) of tea and sugar, toys for the kids, rice, etc. At any rate, I spent most of the day sitting with my family because there were too many children coming to visit asking me to give them money or just coming to stare at me while I read a book or did other day-to-day activities they find so fascinating. It was a nice day because nobody in my family was working for a change. They all just sat around, drank tea, ate good food, and talked. At one point, I caught all but one person sleeping and when I pointed this out everyone woke up and started laughing about it. It reminded me of something that happens at holiday dinners with family at home.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated by volunteers in the Sikasso region, which worked out well for me because I was not allowed to leave my region for the first three months at site. We came into Sikasso before Thanksgiving in order to buy and prepare food. The day before the feast, I helped stir up 9 pumpkin pie mixes. We bought fresh squash, cut it into pieces, boiled it on the stove top, and mixed in the eggs, milk, and other ingredients. We also made homemade pie crusts. We also made a bucket full of apple crisp pie mix and then another girl and I spent the afternoon cooking the pies. We may or may not have eaten a pumpkin and apple crisp pie in the process...

On the actual day, I helped carry a bunch of silverware and dishes to the place we were having the feast. There were two of us carrying huge buckets on top of our heads, just like the Malians do. People thought it was so funny to see us doing this, but I have to tell you, carrying things like buckets on your head makes things so much easier than banging them on the side of your leg and it doesn't wear out your arms. We prepared drinks and then made salads. Then it was time to eat. We had Malian women prepare our turkey, had a huge pot of green beans, another pot of potatoes, stuffing, fresh fruit, and pies. All of the food came fresh from the market right outside of our office and was absolutely delicious. It was good eating and fun to be with 70 other Americans on a day that Malians don't understand for obvious reasons.

The day after Thanksgiving, we all took advantage of the great weather to go to an outdoor pool. Some swam, others put their legs in. Some of the Sikasso boys made us a feast of burritos. Meat, beans (mostly for the bean-eating Coulibalys), cheese, guacamole, salsa, and tortillas. None of us minded not having any silverware. We are all fully comfortable eating with only our fingers at this point. We also had donkey races. Each region had 3 riders and they rode 2 donkeys at a time. Naturally the Sikasso region won the competition, and one girl even took home a trophy of an infected arm after she fell off the donkey.

In-Service Training

So this obviously isn't a real holiday, but it was like a holiday for us because we were with other volunteers and not under the microscope of Malians. We spent two full weeks at our training center near Bamako. The first week it was only volunteers, and we did sector training. I learned a lot of information about setting up a literacy center, improving Bambara and French reading skills of children in the schools, building a canteen at schools, creating a school library, etc. Many of these activities would take two full years to enact so it is a matter of determining what our village needs, but it was nice to learn about resources available to us. Our homologues joined us during the second week. We learned several ways to do needs assessments in our village. They included asking different groups- men, women, children- to create a map of the village to determine what things are important to those groups, doing interviews with different groups and using a voting system to decide on important issues, and many other ways. We did a lot of this during Pre-Service Training so it was a bit frustrating to sit through again, but we made it.

During the evenings, we were free to go into Bamako. Most of us took advantage of this time to visit the grocery store and get a nice dinner. I went to the Formi, which is the biggest grocery store in Bamako. There were canned foods, spices, cereals, cookies, candies, hair products, children's toys, cheeses, and meats. They even had wrapping paper, Christmas lights, inflatable Santas, and Christmas trees. Your typical grocery store, right? It was absolutely overwhelming. These are things we never, ever see anywhere but in Bamako. We have no way to transport some items to our village, and Christmas lights and bathroom cleaning products obviously do us no good when we have no electricity and our bathroom consists of 4 walls and a hole in the floor for a toilet. However, it was nice to just see some of these things. I walked away satisfied with some ravioli, pepper, oregano, chocolate candy, and nutella. I was able to eat a pizza at a restaurant next door and it was delicious. Afterward we went to a bar and listened to traditional music being played live. On another trip I got to eat a pulled pork bbq sandwich, which I would not have dreamed of before seeing it on the menu.

Christmas

Many volunteers took advantage of our ban of visiting other regions being lifted to do some exploring throughout Mali. I went back to site to do a bit of work and met other Sikasso kow volunteers in Woroni, a village south of Sikasso, to spent Christmas Eve at beautiful waterfalls. I had a meeting in the morning. It was supposed to start at 9, but none of the dugutigis (village chiefs) showed up until 10, and one had moto troubles and was going to be late so they had a meeting about something else while we waited. My portion of the meeting didn't start until 12 and was over by 1230. That dugutigi? Never showed. I walked home, hurried to make lunch, and biked for 2.5 hours to get to the waterfalls just before night fall. I had enough time to take some photos. All worth it though. We ate dinner, built a campfire, one person played his guitar for us, and afterward we slept on top of the falls. My bug hut is a tent, but the walls are mosquito nets, meaning I can lay in bed and look at the stars. The next morning we got up with the sun, made breakfast, and hiked back to the main road to catch a ride back to Sikasso. We spent the day skyping with family, put on our Christmas dresses, and had a nice dinner together at a restaurant here in Mali.

New Years

I think this was my favorite holiday to celebrate in Mali so far. On Thursday, I rode up to Koutiala, a town about two hours north of Sikasso. We spent the evening with other volunteers, and ate an amazing meal together. We all had a half chicken and salad. Of course, there was no silverware so we washed our hands and dug in. It was delicious. Have you picked up on how much food means these days? I slept outside under the stars again.

We left early the next morning for Segou, a village another two or three hours north of Koutiala. We arrived around noon and just happened to get out of a bus at the same time as volunteers coming from another region. We dropped our things off at a hotel and set out for lunch. After lunch everyone else left for the pool and I went out for a walk to see the city a bit. I found an awesome belt in the colors of the Malian flag with a glittery belt buckle, which went perfectly with the black t-shirt with gold jewels outlining the continent of Africa I bought in Koutiala. I went to find the others at the pool but discovered the artisans market. It was amazing. There were earrings and necklaces, traditional masks, clothes, wall hangings, and more. There were pretty ruthless because they are used to tourists here, but they were nicer when they discovered I spoke Bambara and were more willing to bargain with me.

So, shopping completed, we all went down to the Niger River, next to the market, to go on a canoe ride. It was an hour long ride up and down the river. There was an Italian restaurant next to the river where we ate lunch. The pizza...wow. Real cheese. Real ham. Real white wine. It was unbelievable. Afterwards it was time for a shower. This was my first hot shower since Thanksgiving. Before that my most recent hot shower was October 18, and then the end of September before that. And then you would have to go all the way back to July 2nd for my last hot shower in America. Perhaps I don't need to say that I took a long, hot shower, and then woke up early the next morning to take another one. It felt nice to get a good portion of the dirt off of my body, but you can never get it all off. And after showering, pampering ourselves with the little amount of make up we had, it was off for New Year's celebrations with new friends. We danced to Dynamite at midnight, a song I had not heard until I got to Koutiala the day before. I hear the song is so old in the States that they rarely play it on the radio anymore. Guess we're a little behind...

The holidays here aren't the same as the holidays at home, but we get to spend Malian holidays with our new Malian friends and family, and we spend the American holidays with other volunteers trying to make the best of our time together. I can't wait to do more exploring in other regions, and you can bet I will keep you updated.