(This post I started quite some time ago but I'll add it here for continuity's sake)
It is almost 1am and I'm wide awake, sitting in the kitchen of my mud hut by the light of my gas lamp, wondering, "Alla mene bi?" -- Are the rains coming? Although the human sense of weather forecasting is becoming more and more acute for me here, I'm not yet as versed as the Malians. Tonight I ate toh in the pitch dark with the Kansayi family (my homologue), and we all remarked how heavy with dampness the air was. Only hours later do I realize that this was an indication of the storm to come. I fell asleep outside under my mosquito-net covered mattress, reading a book called Blindness by Jose Saramago, thinking about what it must be like to live without the precious gift of sight. But then just an hour ago I awoke because of some almost imperceptible change in the air-- my body sensed that something was happening, although the air was still and the temperature unchanged. I opened my eyes to see faint flashes of lightning in the distance-- something that should be imperceptible in slumber, but that nonetheless I was somehow keenly aware of. Sure enough, thirty minutes later the wind picked up, the sky let out a whisper and then a beckoning thunder. Le temps menace, as they would say.
Such a gift of rain would surely ease the troubled and lost mind of the village vielle -- an old woman of 80 or 90 (or so the villagers say) who has been posted up outside my concession under a neem tree every day since my arrival, asking when the rains will come. The first time I came to Pelleni everyone blessed my arrival, for the rain came swift and strong that evening- a sign of good luck and much promise from a stranger. Perhaps this is why the vielle was so dismayed at my second visit's failure to produce such positive results. In response, she called to me from outside my gate, asking for alms as an alternative to the rain, her eyes clouded by cataracts (can she see the rain coming?), skin and flesh hanging leathery off her old bones like half-dried venison. The hot sun will dry her up all the way soon enough, I imagine (Is this why she laments the absence of rain?).
Surely, I too will be sad to see the rainy season go-- to watch the green turn to brown and the rivers and creeks trickle away until they become sandy beds. But now I look forward to the coming of the cold and dry season, because of all the practical annoyances of the humidity and rain. Every time the rain comes like this at night, it means a forced and abrupt end to my much-needed slumber: I have to hop up and untie my mosquito net and drag it and my mattress, mat, sheets, pillow, chair and lantern back inside the sauna that is my house. I re-set up this scene indoors, and then have to check that all of my valuables are covered by a sheet of plastic or properly stowed, so as not to be splattered by the chunks of mud that invariably come weeping out of my poorly built cieling with every hard rain. I'm also concerned about the presence of heat and humidity inside this stuffy house, because various forms of white mold have sprouted up on the rafter beams, spreading white fingers weaving through the support branches and down the mud walls. (Another reason I prefer to sleep outdoors rather than inhale these spores...) But, it is pleasant to sit here and write by the light of the lantern, the sound of the rain tapping on my metal window panes.
I'm going to feel a lot here.
September 23, 2009
September 22, 2009
When Life Gives you Lemons...
As I left the Sevare Peace Corps bureau for site, a PCV from the stage above me left me with this parting consolation-- "If you cry your first night at site, don't worry. I did too." My initial reaction to this was surprise, then confusion, and finally appreciation. I was lucky enough to not be anywhere near this kind of mindset when I headed down the road for Pelleni-- I was thrilled. But her comment made me realize that we are all handling this experience with differing degrees of grace and panic and confusion and elation. A day later I found myself close to tears at site, but not out of sadness or fear. Rather, I found myself almost moved to cry because of a realization I had when sitting at one of the boutiques in town. I was watching a new friend, Khadija, breast feed her baby girl, and I realized all of the sudden that I would be able to see this child grow up so much in the next two years. I looked around at everyone in this scene that only a month ago seemed like it would always be foreign-- girls tressing each other's hair on plastic mats covering the trash-laden ground, men inhaling smoke from their pipes and cigarretes while taking in the new stock for the boutique, mothers clucking the town gossip to each other, their children tugging at their worn breasts for milk, flies swarming incessantly around bits of fallen meat or the open cuts on children's arms and legs, the constant thump of mortar and pestle from women grinding millet nearby. I realized for the first time that these will be my friends for the next two years, and hopefully for life. I finally took it all in, and exhaled happily...
___ ________ _________ ___________ _________
It continually blows my mind that I learned skills at home that are useful here in such a drastically different context. How to fix, start, and clean a gas lantern, for example. This is a simple but familiar skill I acquired that came in handy immediately at site, in the moonless darkness that only a Sahelian African village knows. This task I became practiced in after doing a hundred times in the most unlikely of places-- Burning Man.
Flashback to a dust storm in the middle of the desert, Black Rock City, Nevada... Dozens of half-naked and day-glo painted bodies, clad in bikini bottoms, face masks and swirling goggles, crouched over tables in an almost futile attempt to light hundreds of gas lamps for the ritual nightly Lamp Lighter's procession... all this in the dust and rain and wind before night fall, to the point that blisters formed on our fingers from switch after switch of the metal wheel of a lighter.
We always joked we were training for the apocalypse-- who knew I was really preparing myself for Africa?
Another example comes to mind: Making cordage and rope from discarded plastic bags. When I first did this at my happy hippy permaculture community home of Aprovecho in Oregon, it seemed like such the simple yet conscious, ingenuitive thing to do. Today I watched grown men engaged in the same activity at site, doing so not to be good environmentalists, but rather as a survival technique. They take what they get and do damn hard to make something out of it.
Which brings me to an interesting phrase we use in the U.S.-- "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." We talk a lot in Peace Corps Mali about a concept related to this-- they dub it the 'value chain.' This is basically just the Econ 101 idea of value-added goods: you take a raw good, introduce some production process, and thereby develop a new finished product that will yield a higher profit. Every sector here is taught to promote this idea. But this lemony phrase-- this seemingly apt, simple and obvious statement, when reflected upon, reveals itself as entirely culturally relative. Even though it is about optivism, it is couched in economic presuppositions that don't necessarily exist everywhere. The cynical side of me wants to ask this burning question: What if life doesn't just simply give you lemons? What if you have to grow the lemons yourself? What if, in one scenario, you and your family have to spend every day planting and taking care of these lemon trees, because they're virtually the only thing that can grow in your region? What if you survive off of eating lemons, but to process them into a meal takes an entire day's work? Or in another scenario, if you're lucky enough to have more lemons to spare than just for your own subsistence, what if you spend all of your time and money to produce lemonade for retail (buying sugar, hauling water from a well, buying bags/bottles and extra ingredients, paying for the electricity and the usage of a fridge to cool it)? What if after all this, no one around you can afford to buy it except at a price that leaves your profit margin hanging on dimes and cents? These two scenarios parallel common income/food generating activities here-- harvesting millet to make toh for subsistence farmers in the North of Mali, and producing the hibiscus plant used all over West Africa to make a sweet crimson juice called dablini (or bissap).
I suppose this is why I'm not a Small Enterprise Development sector volunteer. Hopefully these "what if's" will find their answers for me in the next two years. For now, I am simply reminded of a line from a song school children in the south of Senegal sang to me once. It translates to this: "We, the cultivators, despite our misery, have never known despair."
___ ________ _________ ___________ _________
It continually blows my mind that I learned skills at home that are useful here in such a drastically different context. How to fix, start, and clean a gas lantern, for example. This is a simple but familiar skill I acquired that came in handy immediately at site, in the moonless darkness that only a Sahelian African village knows. This task I became practiced in after doing a hundred times in the most unlikely of places-- Burning Man.
Flashback to a dust storm in the middle of the desert, Black Rock City, Nevada... Dozens of half-naked and day-glo painted bodies, clad in bikini bottoms, face masks and swirling goggles, crouched over tables in an almost futile attempt to light hundreds of gas lamps for the ritual nightly Lamp Lighter's procession... all this in the dust and rain and wind before night fall, to the point that blisters formed on our fingers from switch after switch of the metal wheel of a lighter.
We always joked we were training for the apocalypse-- who knew I was really preparing myself for Africa?
Another example comes to mind: Making cordage and rope from discarded plastic bags. When I first did this at my happy hippy permaculture community home of Aprovecho in Oregon, it seemed like such the simple yet conscious, ingenuitive thing to do. Today I watched grown men engaged in the same activity at site, doing so not to be good environmentalists, but rather as a survival technique. They take what they get and do damn hard to make something out of it.
Which brings me to an interesting phrase we use in the U.S.-- "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." We talk a lot in Peace Corps Mali about a concept related to this-- they dub it the 'value chain.' This is basically just the Econ 101 idea of value-added goods: you take a raw good, introduce some production process, and thereby develop a new finished product that will yield a higher profit. Every sector here is taught to promote this idea. But this lemony phrase-- this seemingly apt, simple and obvious statement, when reflected upon, reveals itself as entirely culturally relative. Even though it is about optivism, it is couched in economic presuppositions that don't necessarily exist everywhere. The cynical side of me wants to ask this burning question: What if life doesn't just simply give you lemons? What if you have to grow the lemons yourself? What if, in one scenario, you and your family have to spend every day planting and taking care of these lemon trees, because they're virtually the only thing that can grow in your region? What if you survive off of eating lemons, but to process them into a meal takes an entire day's work? Or in another scenario, if you're lucky enough to have more lemons to spare than just for your own subsistence, what if you spend all of your time and money to produce lemonade for retail (buying sugar, hauling water from a well, buying bags/bottles and extra ingredients, paying for the electricity and the usage of a fridge to cool it)? What if after all this, no one around you can afford to buy it except at a price that leaves your profit margin hanging on dimes and cents? These two scenarios parallel common income/food generating activities here-- harvesting millet to make toh for subsistence farmers in the North of Mali, and producing the hibiscus plant used all over West Africa to make a sweet crimson juice called dablini (or bissap).
I suppose this is why I'm not a Small Enterprise Development sector volunteer. Hopefully these "what if's" will find their answers for me in the next two years. For now, I am simply reminded of a line from a song school children in the south of Senegal sang to me once. It translates to this: "We, the cultivators, despite our misery, have never known despair."
September 16, 2009
Aw bisimillah to the new "Risky Business"
Two weeks slip by so fast, and yet it feels like ages since I last updated my blog. So much has happened. Last week I officially swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer, thus completing my two months of training. The last week at homestay was a blur, and then came a week of celebration, goodbyes and new hello's. The last night at the training center at Tubaniso, we had an amazing talent show put on by the wonderful Owen (a true rennaissance man). We had almost ten different acts, and it was HILARIOUS. On my own part, I bunched together with several friends to perform a circus act, complete with juggling, hula hooping and chain smoking cigarettes. For those of you who know me well, you know I have no hula hooping skills-- but thanks to the lovely Katheryn Stofer I learned some mad skills in the 24 hours prior to the show. It was so much fun. The winning acts were a harmony of "the rains in Africa," a makeshift mad Malian dance by one of the shier (and unpredictable) volunteers, and a percussion set complete with vocals chanting "Tubaaaaaaaab, wake up!" in the style of the call to prayer heard every morning (and a re-enactment of the PCVs regular morning run to the nyegen). What a night. We put together a list of superlatives for all of the group, and they were unveiled throughout the show. Mine, quite fittingly I suppose, was "Most likely to teach her entire village to say 'yeah, man'". Man, I need to work on that. What a night.
On 9/9/2009 (a date to remember), I signed my contract as a Peace Corps volunteer, and two days later (9/11), we were all shuttled to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako to be given the benedictions of the Embassador and numerous other folks who I'm sure will have nothing to do with the next two years of my life. We rolled up to the Embassy at 9am, all dressed up in Malian garb and half hung-over from the celebrations the evening prior. The embassy stands in stark contrast to the rest of Bamako-- a pompous marble behemouth of a building with antennaes and satellite dishes dangling off it's ears like Akon's blinged out studs (I'm sure that won't be the first Akon reference, they LOVE him out here), and set amongst the only imported grass existing in that quantity in Mali. We sat down to listen to a dozen speeches all beginning with "Mesdames et Messieurs, son Excellence l'Embassadeur, etc.". I had the (un?)fortunate opportunity to be amongst the speech-givers, and got up in front of the 300-some crowd to give a speech in a language that only one (ok, two) understood a word of. It was aired nationally on Malian television, so it was an honor. I must admit, it was a beautiful and pride-instilling thing to watch my colleagues get up one by one and speak (damn well) in six different languages that none of us knew a word of only two months ago. They say that Peace Corps language immersion is the best way to learn a language, and I'd have to agree. Kanda, mii Dogulodomu dage dage damu belebun (now I can speak a fair amount of Dogulosso).
After the Embassy, we were whisked away to the American Club to begin our "Spring Break Mali 2009" celebration. Despite the fact that we were in the position to party like crazy in celebration, a looming fog seemed to hang over many of our heads about the next two years to come, and what that means for us emotionally. Nonetheless, we played in the pool, ate amazing food and watched Kill Bill in an air conditioned mini-theater-- a little bit of home before we got shipped off to the real Mali. Afterwards we were shuttled to the Campagnard, a hotel in downtown Bamako not far from the clubs, etc. I ate two ice cream cones and drank whiskey cokes, and got ready for a rowdy night. Since this whole experience has been akin to a 'new student orientation' at college, or even a summer camp, this was our last big bang, and as such some level of debauchery was required. We went to two different clubs and all danced like mad (which gets pretty sticky considering how damn hot it gets here). Each new class of entering PCVs ("stage" in French) is given a name at this point, and we were bestowed with the name "Risky Business". They thought about "the Mullets", since we're business in the front and party in the back... both get the same idea across. It's going to be a good two years with these folks.
Two days later we had to pack up our things for one final journey, and say our bittersweet farewells. Us, the Mopti Kaw, had yet another hazardous and haranguing experience making the trip up north, which took fifteen hours this time around. We'd better get used to this. A few days in Sevare, collecting everything from mattress pads to tea sets, chickens, cats and kola nuts, and we were ready to be shipped off to site. I sit here writing this post at the Hotel la Falaise (Hotel of the Cliffs) in Bandiagara, the night before I head out to Pelleni, my new home. The next three months will be a huge change of pace, but one that is much needed. This will be the time in which we make it or break it back to the States, and I wish the best of luck and peace to my friends spread out across the country, strugging to find their place in a world that is so different from our home.
On 9/9/2009 (a date to remember), I signed my contract as a Peace Corps volunteer, and two days later (9/11), we were all shuttled to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako to be given the benedictions of the Embassador and numerous other folks who I'm sure will have nothing to do with the next two years of my life. We rolled up to the Embassy at 9am, all dressed up in Malian garb and half hung-over from the celebrations the evening prior. The embassy stands in stark contrast to the rest of Bamako-- a pompous marble behemouth of a building with antennaes and satellite dishes dangling off it's ears like Akon's blinged out studs (I'm sure that won't be the first Akon reference, they LOVE him out here), and set amongst the only imported grass existing in that quantity in Mali. We sat down to listen to a dozen speeches all beginning with "Mesdames et Messieurs, son Excellence l'Embassadeur, etc.". I had the (un?)fortunate opportunity to be amongst the speech-givers, and got up in front of the 300-some crowd to give a speech in a language that only one (ok, two) understood a word of. It was aired nationally on Malian television, so it was an honor. I must admit, it was a beautiful and pride-instilling thing to watch my colleagues get up one by one and speak (damn well) in six different languages that none of us knew a word of only two months ago. They say that Peace Corps language immersion is the best way to learn a language, and I'd have to agree. Kanda, mii Dogulodomu dage dage damu belebun (now I can speak a fair amount of Dogulosso).
After the Embassy, we were whisked away to the American Club to begin our "Spring Break Mali 2009" celebration. Despite the fact that we were in the position to party like crazy in celebration, a looming fog seemed to hang over many of our heads about the next two years to come, and what that means for us emotionally. Nonetheless, we played in the pool, ate amazing food and watched Kill Bill in an air conditioned mini-theater-- a little bit of home before we got shipped off to the real Mali. Afterwards we were shuttled to the Campagnard, a hotel in downtown Bamako not far from the clubs, etc. I ate two ice cream cones and drank whiskey cokes, and got ready for a rowdy night. Since this whole experience has been akin to a 'new student orientation' at college, or even a summer camp, this was our last big bang, and as such some level of debauchery was required. We went to two different clubs and all danced like mad (which gets pretty sticky considering how damn hot it gets here). Each new class of entering PCVs ("stage" in French) is given a name at this point, and we were bestowed with the name "Risky Business". They thought about "the Mullets", since we're business in the front and party in the back... both get the same idea across. It's going to be a good two years with these folks.
Two days later we had to pack up our things for one final journey, and say our bittersweet farewells. Us, the Mopti Kaw, had yet another hazardous and haranguing experience making the trip up north, which took fifteen hours this time around. We'd better get used to this. A few days in Sevare, collecting everything from mattress pads to tea sets, chickens, cats and kola nuts, and we were ready to be shipped off to site. I sit here writing this post at the Hotel la Falaise (Hotel of the Cliffs) in Bandiagara, the night before I head out to Pelleni, my new home. The next three months will be a huge change of pace, but one that is much needed. This will be the time in which we make it or break it back to the States, and I wish the best of luck and peace to my friends spread out across the country, strugging to find their place in a world that is so different from our home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
