nene be means it is cold
Well, I can't believe that it has already been three months at my village, I feel as though I just got there. Anyway, I am back at Tubani So for training and will be here for the next week or so. I feel once again daunted by the task of trying to write one blog to cover my time at site and I am sure that I will forget a bunch of stuff that I will try to hastily add later; however, I felt that I had ignored my blog long enough so here it goes...
I suppose a good a place to start with is the holidays. For thanksgiving I did well nothing. I had told my homologue that I wanted to get a bunch of chickens and have a big dinner with his family and my Jatigi (host dad) family. However, I forgot that Thursday was market day and that Konimba (my homologue) would be at Sirokorala. Therefore, I ate to...twice...for thanksgiving, it was well, dissapointing to say the least. However, I somewhat saved the day by having chicken and spaghetti on Friday. Christmas was a little bit more exciting and fun. Two other teamates and myself went into Koulikoro (our regional calendar) and hung out for three days. On the first day, we met this college professor who informed us that there was a college campus about 4 kms away in a town called Katia bugu (I doubt I spelled that right). So we decided to go there expecting it to be pretty lame, (I mean, college campus and Mali can't be the same as the states) only to find that in fact it was a real college campus. True a lot of the buildings were "Malian" and some of them were built by the French but right as we got there we saw Malian kids playing frisbee and right on campus was a bar called the hall of peasants (built under the communist regime no doubt) . We met with the professor that night and had some beers and he told us that we had to come back the next day for Christmas. So for Christmas, we spent the neight eating chicken and fries, drinking beer, and listening to Britney Spears while talking to the Malian professor about life in Mali and the educational system in West Africa. We ended the night by shooting off bottle rockets on the beach next to the Niger River, all in all, not too bad. New Years was pretty uneventful and fun. Tabaski (the Muslim new year based on the lunar calendar) happened this year at the same time as our new years so the whole week became a pretty big celebration. Traditionally every family kills a sheep for Tabaski. However, our village did that and killed a cow that they split among the entire village. This was pretty cool since it allowed us to eat a lot of meat (I have now eaten ust about every part of the cow, goat, and sheep. Most underated - stomach/ worst- cow heart) Those nights there was dancing and all sorts of music for the kids and women. It is pretty funny, all the women dance in this huge circle around the ballofone (Malian instrument) and the men sit in small groups around the circle and stare, kind of like a middle school dance. For actualy New Years I was so burned out from the past days that I ended up going to bed around 9:30 woo hoo. haha. Although I have to say the holiday seasons are a little bit more fun and eventful in the states, I have to say I had a pretty good time in village and can't really complain too much.
As far as what I have been doing on a day to day basis, I have spent a lot of time out in the fields, a lot of time trying to learn the language, and a lot of time reading and wandering around in the bruce. Since I came to the village right in the middle of harvesting season, I decided to spend every morning out in the fields helping with the work. I have cut and beat millet and sorghum, farmed peanuts, and cotton. Sorghum was actually really funny. What my village did was spread the sorghum stalks all over the ground ina circle, then took a donkey cart with rocks in the back and ran it around over the stalks. The best was when Bah, one of the crew who was driving the cart, looked at me and was like "abdulai, tractor!" And made car noises as he guided the donkey over the sorghum. Peanut farming was probably my least favorite of the farming because you have to spend all day bent over the ground with a daba digging up the peanuts, by lunch my back did not feel good. On the plus side, you get to stop every 15 minutes and munch on some fresh peanuts that you pulled out of the ground, I definitely was not lacking peanuts those two weeks. Cotton was definitely the most fun of all the farming. Whereas most farming activities involve only small family groups, the cotton field is owned by the entire community. When I got out there it was almost like a small party, there were about 50 people out there picking the cotton and singing songs. For lunch we had a bunch of to (big surprise) and ate some chicken (For some reason the villagers keep thinking that I like chicken neck, which I am then forced to eat haha).
I also have spent a lot of time out in the bruce going on bike rides and walking around, my friend Mike and myself decided we wanted to climb one of the mountains near my house (the bruce is my backyard) and got to the top, only to get lost. Luckily we were able to find our way back to the main road and locate our bikes. There is not a whole lot of animal life around my area and I don't have great stories about lion hunts to talk about. When you think of Africa and gazelles running across the plains well, I don't have that. Although I do wake up to donkeys running across the fields and sometimes getting intimate in the woods next to my negen where I shower, that is always a good time...not. I did see a snake (probably a viper or cobra) eating a large lizard while on a bike ride. I had my sling shot with me and was like man, I should take a shot at this snake, that would be a great story to tell about killing a cobra. Then I thought yes, but I could also see the story ending in, Dan shot the cobra, pissed it off, and got bitten...so i biked away haha. My language is still coming along small small (as the malians say) and I am getting to the point where I can express myself pretty well but trying to understand what other say to me is always a hard time. It doesn't help that I am apparently in an area of Mali known as bellidugu, which is the New Jersey of Mali, that and a lot of the older men in my village don't have their teeth, that also raises some issue. As far as my projects, my villagers want to focus on animal raising. The men want cows because well, cows are money, and the women want goats and sheep. I am more inclined to work with the women because they actually want to use the goats and sheep as a means to achieve development. In this case, buying a grain grinder and starting a bambara reading center so that they can read. Although I have a few ideas about how these projects are going to proceed, I am not naive enough to believe that everything will follow my vision and am interested to see how things actually turn out.
I am now back in Tubani So for training and things are beginning to calm down, the first couple of days were pretty intense with the training and everything. The food is absolutely amazing and I am doing everything I can to fatten up a little and have spent most of my time eating food and well, eating food. After this training session I am going with a bunch of other volunteers to Teryabougou ( a town in Segou) which is apparently the gem of Mali according to my friend Abdulai, so I am pretty excited. Besides that, I have tried to write down everything I can remember about the past couple of months, I am sure I left a huge amount out, which I will try to add later. Hopefully, you can all understand my hasty writing and make some sense out of it. I miss you all a lot, take care!
-Daniel
I suppose a good a place to start with is the holidays. For thanksgiving I did well nothing. I had told my homologue that I wanted to get a bunch of chickens and have a big dinner with his family and my Jatigi (host dad) family. However, I forgot that Thursday was market day and that Konimba (my homologue) would be at Sirokorala. Therefore, I ate to...twice...for thanksgiving, it was well, dissapointing to say the least. However, I somewhat saved the day by having chicken and spaghetti on Friday. Christmas was a little bit more exciting and fun. Two other teamates and myself went into Koulikoro (our regional calendar) and hung out for three days. On the first day, we met this college professor who informed us that there was a college campus about 4 kms away in a town called Katia bugu (I doubt I spelled that right). So we decided to go there expecting it to be pretty lame, (I mean, college campus and Mali can't be the same as the states) only to find that in fact it was a real college campus. True a lot of the buildings were "Malian" and some of them were built by the French but right as we got there we saw Malian kids playing frisbee and right on campus was a bar called the hall of peasants (built under the communist regime no doubt) . We met with the professor that night and had some beers and he told us that we had to come back the next day for Christmas. So for Christmas, we spent the neight eating chicken and fries, drinking beer, and listening to Britney Spears while talking to the Malian professor about life in Mali and the educational system in West Africa. We ended the night by shooting off bottle rockets on the beach next to the Niger River, all in all, not too bad. New Years was pretty uneventful and fun. Tabaski (the Muslim new year based on the lunar calendar) happened this year at the same time as our new years so the whole week became a pretty big celebration. Traditionally every family kills a sheep for Tabaski. However, our village did that and killed a cow that they split among the entire village. This was pretty cool since it allowed us to eat a lot of meat (I have now eaten ust about every part of the cow, goat, and sheep. Most underated - stomach/ worst- cow heart) Those nights there was dancing and all sorts of music for the kids and women. It is pretty funny, all the women dance in this huge circle around the ballofone (Malian instrument) and the men sit in small groups around the circle and stare, kind of like a middle school dance. For actualy New Years I was so burned out from the past days that I ended up going to bed around 9:30 woo hoo. haha. Although I have to say the holiday seasons are a little bit more fun and eventful in the states, I have to say I had a pretty good time in village and can't really complain too much.
As far as what I have been doing on a day to day basis, I have spent a lot of time out in the fields, a lot of time trying to learn the language, and a lot of time reading and wandering around in the bruce. Since I came to the village right in the middle of harvesting season, I decided to spend every morning out in the fields helping with the work. I have cut and beat millet and sorghum, farmed peanuts, and cotton. Sorghum was actually really funny. What my village did was spread the sorghum stalks all over the ground ina circle, then took a donkey cart with rocks in the back and ran it around over the stalks. The best was when Bah, one of the crew who was driving the cart, looked at me and was like "abdulai, tractor!" And made car noises as he guided the donkey over the sorghum. Peanut farming was probably my least favorite of the farming because you have to spend all day bent over the ground with a daba digging up the peanuts, by lunch my back did not feel good. On the plus side, you get to stop every 15 minutes and munch on some fresh peanuts that you pulled out of the ground, I definitely was not lacking peanuts those two weeks. Cotton was definitely the most fun of all the farming. Whereas most farming activities involve only small family groups, the cotton field is owned by the entire community. When I got out there it was almost like a small party, there were about 50 people out there picking the cotton and singing songs. For lunch we had a bunch of to (big surprise) and ate some chicken (For some reason the villagers keep thinking that I like chicken neck, which I am then forced to eat haha).
I also have spent a lot of time out in the bruce going on bike rides and walking around, my friend Mike and myself decided we wanted to climb one of the mountains near my house (the bruce is my backyard) and got to the top, only to get lost. Luckily we were able to find our way back to the main road and locate our bikes. There is not a whole lot of animal life around my area and I don't have great stories about lion hunts to talk about. When you think of Africa and gazelles running across the plains well, I don't have that. Although I do wake up to donkeys running across the fields and sometimes getting intimate in the woods next to my negen where I shower, that is always a good time...not. I did see a snake (probably a viper or cobra) eating a large lizard while on a bike ride. I had my sling shot with me and was like man, I should take a shot at this snake, that would be a great story to tell about killing a cobra. Then I thought yes, but I could also see the story ending in, Dan shot the cobra, pissed it off, and got bitten...so i biked away haha. My language is still coming along small small (as the malians say) and I am getting to the point where I can express myself pretty well but trying to understand what other say to me is always a hard time. It doesn't help that I am apparently in an area of Mali known as bellidugu, which is the New Jersey of Mali, that and a lot of the older men in my village don't have their teeth, that also raises some issue. As far as my projects, my villagers want to focus on animal raising. The men want cows because well, cows are money, and the women want goats and sheep. I am more inclined to work with the women because they actually want to use the goats and sheep as a means to achieve development. In this case, buying a grain grinder and starting a bambara reading center so that they can read. Although I have a few ideas about how these projects are going to proceed, I am not naive enough to believe that everything will follow my vision and am interested to see how things actually turn out.
I am now back in Tubani So for training and things are beginning to calm down, the first couple of days were pretty intense with the training and everything. The food is absolutely amazing and I am doing everything I can to fatten up a little and have spent most of my time eating food and well, eating food. After this training session I am going with a bunch of other volunteers to Teryabougou ( a town in Segou) which is apparently the gem of Mali according to my friend Abdulai, so I am pretty excited. Besides that, I have tried to write down everything I can remember about the past couple of months, I am sure I left a huge amount out, which I will try to add later. Hopefully, you can all understand my hasty writing and make some sense out of it. I miss you all a lot, take care!
-Daniel
posted by Daniel Marsh at 1:55 PM
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