Cows, weddings and sweating

I want to start off by apologizing for doing such a rotten job lately of keeping up with my blog. I can't believe how long it has been since I have actually updated this thing. Anyway, Since it has been a while since I have written I will try my best to touch on some of the big things going on here.

The cow project is going pretty well, we are down to about 4 cows left and are looking to sell them soon. This project has definitely been a huge learning experience for me and I regret that I will not be able to see it through the second cycle of buying cows since I would be able to do the project much more efficiently. The main problem being so far is that I haven't been able to find one mass buyer of cows in Bamako who I can sell all my cows to at once. We have to take the cows down the Kati cow market here, which while a good market, hasn't allowed us to sell all the cows in one or two days. Since we don't have a place to keep the cows in Bamako, they have to be brought back up after a couple of days and then fed more feed. That being said, none of the cows have died of disease which would have killed any profit that this project could attain and all the cows are really healthy and fat, I have thought of buying a couple myself after eating only to for several days straight, haha.

Wedding season is just ending right about now and while last year I was really excited about it and open to experience the differences in cultures, I found myself somewhat jaded and critical of the process this year. I think my main problem with the wedding system here is that it spreads out over years and years. My good friend Ba finally had his official wedding ceremony take place, which he was not allowed to attend (he had a civil wedding ceremony a couple of years ago). This happened after he has already been married to his wife for about 7 years and they already have 2 kids together. Also, since they haven't had their kognion ceremony yet his wife probably won't be able to move to his village for another 5 years or so while he gets the money to pay for that ceremony. That means that his daughter Jamanko more or less doesn't see her mom except for acouple of weeks every year. My other friend Madu just had his kognion after being married for 7 years and finally his wife has come to the village which is about time since she is pregnant with her 4th child. During the ceremony all the men sat together while the old men talked about how good this was and how Madu will be a good husband (pretty much the same thing they said 7 years ago at the wedding ceremony) later on Madu told me that he was sad because he really wanted to go to Koula to hang out with his girlfriend. I was like great Madu, good job. Overall I don't know, I have quizzed some of the young guys who are approaching the age of marriage on what they think of the process and they all seem totally fine with it which makes me think maybe I am just not being culturally sensitive enough, then again, I definitely think there is a lack of logic to some of the ceremonies here.

A really sad event occurred the other week when I got back to village and found out that Jenema's newborn child, Korotumu, had passed away while I was gone. No one really talked about it that much but one of the guys from my host family's concession came over and informed me. Usually the death of a baby isn't really something that the village makes a big deal over, as opposed to the death of an elder, but obviosuly it is devastating for the parents. Makono was definitely more high strung the next couple of a weeks and Jenema seemed spaced out quite a bit. The kids were also very sad over it understandably since they really loved playing with the Korotumu. I was really sad about it since Makono and Jenema are two of my favorite people in village and I am really close with them and their kids and Korotumu was one of the few babies in village that I used to hold and play with.

I just got back from a Shea butter formation which taught the women how to hold a formation in their village to organize the collection and production of high quality shea. Overall, I think the formation was a success in that it did teach the women how to make sellable shea butter and stressed the importance on forming a group to produce large quantities of it. However, I felt overall that the women were sort of confused on who they could then sell the shea to. Many asked questions about this and I could see that some of them were thinking that what was the point of making this high quality shea ( which is more difficult to do than the way they currently make it) if they didn't have an actual buyer that would ensure they would be paid for it. Also, the formateur mentioned that there was a machine you could get which would mix the shea butter for them and make it much easier to do large amounts. As with all malians, the second you mention that their is a machine that can do it or something like that, that is the number one thing that sticks in their head. My friend Mike went back to his village to have a meeting with his women's group and of course the first thing they said was, there is a machine you can get which will do it for you!!! I am excited to have this meeting with my women and to see if this is something they would be interested in since the amount of profit to be made is significant and it is something they have already been doing their entire lives.

Well, I think I am at the end of this entry, I have to get on my sotrama to get back to site pretty soon which should be fun since its about 110 degrees out. It has honestly been painfully hot, to the point that you want to drink water to hydrate but at the same time you don't since the second you have any you immediately start sweating uncontrollably as your body tries to cool itself down. I went over to my friends house for tutoring the other day which is like a 3 minute bike ride away and he gave me some water. Five minutes later he was like, are you okay?? You are sweating on the paper. Other than that, everything is going well here. I miss you all. Take care.

cobra, the other other white..er.. meat

So I just got back from my market. It is another scorching hot day, well actaully, scratch that, it is pretty overcast and relatively cool, only in the 90's. Anyway, I am handing out my market buys to my host mom to cook up for dinner when I hear this giant explosion about 50 yards away. At first I think nothing of it, some of the kids who are playing cards jump a little then look at me to say that someone shot off a gun, a little close perhaps, but otherwise nothing too remarkable. Thinking nothing of it I head back to my hut to drop off my backpack and put my bike away, returning to my host family's house I see a gaggle of men standing outside my concession underneath a tree. Going over there I more or less figure that they just killed a goat or sheep which is always nice because it means extra meat for dinner, and I had decided only to buy rice at market and therefore meat was definitely desirable. However, as I get closer I notice neither animal nor knife, instead, a cekoroba (old man) comes up to me and says, "a be gorongo faga" Confused at first I search my memory bank for the word gorongo, its not one used normally, until I remember that it means cobra. Then I direct my eyes to the ground where the entire scene finally makes sense, jerkily moving on the ground is a five foot black cobra, over it stands madu with an old double barrel shotgun. Ba has just finished cutting off the head of the cobra and is now placing it on a stick, for what reasons I am still not sure, probably something related to Malian math. So I am a little freaked out, I have dealt with scorpions and non poisonous snakes so far but a 5 foot cobra next to my concession, well it sort of freaked me out. However, keeping my cool I look at Ba and ask, "hey, are we going to eat it or what" To which he replies, "absolutely". So after boiling it for an hour or so I am handed a couple of pieces of cobra meat with the black skin still on. Now I know that it has been said before, but cobra really does taste like chicken, and with the ribs and everything it almost tastes like pork ribs. Of course I had to get over the idea that I was eating osmething that an hour ago could have bitten me something fierce, it was overall and enjoyable experience. They kept telling me to eat the skin to which I did, and found it to be exactly like chicken skin, making me wodner why they liked it so much. The only really funny thing about this whole exchange was when I asked them why kids aren't allowed to eat snake. Apparently snake gets caught in their teeth and then the adults have to pick it out. When I pointed out that all meat here gets stuck in ones teeth, they finally admitted it was because they don't want kids to know that snakes and cobra especially taste good for fear that the kids will spend their time trying to find and hunt cobras in the bruce. Overall I thought that was a pretty good idea.

Been a while

So I really feel that I should apologize for taking so long to get out this last blog. I would like to say I have just been too busy at site to have made it into Bamako but unfortunately it is more along the lines that I couldn't drag myself to sit down and actually write a blog. That being said, this one is going to be decidedly long and most definitely a jumble of anything I can think about the last couple months.

So I got back in July which hit us right during the middle of rainy slash working season. Driving back to my village I was amazed at how much it had changed. areas that were desert when I left were suddenly jungle like and vibrantly green. I remember thinking that the sotrama driver had perhaps taken a wrong turn and indeed I was in some completely other location. The rain itself was much better this year and the people promise me that peanuts are going to drop at least 250 cfa (which is like in half) per kilo. This is exciting because it means that I can buy peanuts so my family can make tigadegena (peanut sauce with rice). Mali definitely different with the rain in that it will still be really hot most of the time but when it rains, man it rains ( my screen door fell off the rain was pouring so hard). I started a challenge with my villagers about guessing when the rain would come. They were convinced that I always knew since I was an American and Americans have satellites and stuff to track weather, the fact that I was in Mali didn't convince them otherwise (that and I actually was pretty good about guessing when the rain would come). Rainy season also means farming season, and for all the sitting around that the men do throughout the year, they definitely make up for it during these couple of months. I tried to make it out to the fields, and succeeded in helping plow the fields with cows. (which was an experience in itself, the hardest part is actually dealing with keeping the plow straight as the cows don't always follow a straight line and the plow likes to move around a little) Once you get the hang of it, it is sort of like ice skating over dirt. haha. However, when it came to the cikeing, I wasn't able to hang as long. They spend months going out every day with a short ho (daba) and just bend over all day weeding acres of fields. I went out several time and by noon I could barely bend my back I was in so much pain. I remember I was at market one day and some lady asked me if I worked in the fields, trying to be cool I was like of course I ci ke. Then the woman was like oh yea, let me seeyour hands. When I showed them to her she laughed and was like you don't work the fields, your hands aren't covered in blisters. It was a little embarrassing. I got my garden planted and it has been moderately successful. The squash are doing much better now that it has dried out a little, the corn went in a little late so it is ready for harvest but won't have a very high yield. The basil however, well I am a basil king you could say. I have more basil than I know what to do with, and my villagers won't take it as they have no idea how they would use it (frankly I am okay with this, experimenting with to sauce rarely turns out well.) Rain season also is known as bat season, and for about two months there were more bats than I have ever seen constantly circling the village and hanging out in the trees. Several times every day you could count on a huge migration of thousands of bats launching into the sky and making horrendous noises. However, on the plus side, everynow and then a bat falls off his ledge and dies, which means that the kids get to cook and then eat the bats. I had a little and I have to say, while I won't eat it again, it was pretty good meat. A combination of chicken and rabbit. Oh yes, speaking of which my rabbit finally had a kid, proving my teammate Mike wrong in beleiving that had I bought two male rabbits. haha.

We have two new volunteers in Northern Koulikoro, one in Koulikoro itself so that has been fun getting to know the new people, even though it has been sad watching the old stage all head back to the States. Hmmm... Selila just happened which is the big celebration that follows Ramadan. It seems that my entire village this year really went all out with the fasting an were super serious about it. Last year I remember every one eating and not being too concerned but this year I had to eat lunch with the kids since none of the grown ups would eat. ( although Makono still insisted on boiling tea for me everyday even though he could not drink it) I got asked several times why I was not fasting but just told them that I couldn't, they thought it was pretty funny. Some guy asked me this while he was eating and I asked him why he wasn't fasting, he told me that today was his day off, at which I told him he was ridiculous. Anyway back to selila, we killed two cows which was good times since I ate more meat than I thought possible and got to the point where I was looking foward to to. I had some stomach problems one day and was going into the medical center to take some tests that morning and Makono my guy made me eat some refried beef before I went. I looked at him like, "Makono, I am going into bamako because my stomach hurts, and you are forcing refried beef on me at 630 in the morning, seriously??" haha. I have come the conclusion though that Seli la is a combination of Halloween and Thanksgiving. You eat a lot of food, the kids go around and get candy by saying a formulaic greeting, Mali played soccer to qualify for the Coup d'Afrique in January and all the guys got together in the afternoon and went out to play a game of soccer ourselves (after we cut down four tree branches to make the goals of course) .

As for now, school is starting up again so a bunch of kids that went to bamako and their home villages are back now to go to the local school (Wolongotoba hosts lots of kids because Koula-the secondary school- is only 4 kms away and all Malians in my area have relatives in neighboring villages) I am planning on working again with the local Wolongotoba school kids in math which should be a good time since I actually have flash cards and ideas on different math related games to play with them. My womens group got their five sheep and we have had some meetings on how best for them to raise the sheep for selling, I am still ocncerned with that they are going to be doing with the money once they make it and hope they are willing to reinvest it into buying more sheep, but we shall see about that. Of course the mens cow project is what all of you are familiar with since I spent a good time in the states campaigning for your donations. I wanted to first off thank everyone that donated money and let you know that the project is funded and that it would have been started long ago except for time constraints. I got back during rainy season when every one was farming (including the corn for the future cows themsevles) and therefore couldn't build the fence. Then Ramadan came and everyone was fasting so that they weren't able to do any work. However, I have been assured by my villagers that by the end of october they are going to divert all their attention to the project and we can really get the ball rolling, which I am looking foward to. My villagers were very thankful for all the support and really surprised at how quickly I was able to come up with so enormous a fund of money to start the project, so once again thank you everyone for your support.

I think that brings me to the end of this blog, although I am sure I will instantly remember things as soon as a publish it, it is all I can think of right now to mention, and hopefully I hit all the big events. I hope that everyone is doing well in the States and I miss everyone a bunch. Take care and I will try to update again soon.

Kool Aid rocks

my class

Kalifa

pounding some millet