Monday, November 30, 2009
shotty observations, poorley transitioned from previous blog
cccooolldddd
I sleep outside. I sleep outside in a bug tent, placed on top of a foam mattress. This is preferable to sleeping inside in as much as my house has the exact physical and thermodynamic properties of a large pizza oven, the kind found at your trendy bistro, or lunch time hot-spot. Sleeping outdoors is a presumed and practiced necessity for anyone living in West Africa during at least 7/10ths of the year. The heat lulls you at first in to a false sense of calm, tempting you to believe that the air you breathe knows not from cool. How could a cruel and unforgiving sun yield so much of its power to orbital shift and particle deceleration. How could it get so damn cold this close to the equator? I heard it was coming…’’its coming’’ they said, that’s what I heard. Yet, having forgotten that a certain potent patent clerk’s theory of relativity was not also relative in its application, I was rendered mildly unawares as to the extremes to which these desert-esque environs can swing. I awoke one night unsure of the source of the restless, sleepless hours past, when I realized I was cold. A novelty at first, and one I took note of with fine accord. “ahhh cold season huh, livin’ the life here’’ yet several more restless hours later, sweating profusely under two heavy wool blankets (I might mention now that we were issued wool blankets and a great laugh was had by all… at the time) I dared not expose my skin to the sub-sixty degree weather outside at risk of a mild chill, the shivers, or worse..Being uncomfortable! Huh, I guess it is all relative.
Ok, ok trust me it’s colder than it sounds. We Americans, even ones of southern origin are tempered by a deciduous climate and longer, more resolute exposure to cold, so you’d think that after weeks of stifling heat, that a night in the fifties (just guessing at that temp) would be a welcomed relief, and as the evening cools, it is.
I wandered into Kalifa’s compound, around 7:30 for my usual night time glad hand, how’s the family type visit, but Kalifa wasn’t in his usual spot, brewing tea from a plant he calls ShokoroJe, or ‘’old white bean’’. The kids, sitting on an old animal skin, studying introductory biology in French by oil lamp and seemingly unfazed by the tempature, being shirtless and full of guile, directed me to the door of kalifas room. The entrance was draped over with a thin, pale blue cloth, embroidered with maroon stitching. I pulled it back and went inside. Kalifa lay bundled up under a floral print fleece blanket, next to a small metal cook stove, the glowing orange embers casting a pallor over the room. “Kalifa, good evening” “ahh Sidiki, good evening, my health might not be good” “oh, Kalifa, you sick, I’m sorry!” “no, no I’m not sick, but I might be later, it’s SO cold!!’’ well, as I had trotted over in a t-shirt, enjoying the sudden cool down from the heat of the day, I was struck with a strong sense of empathy and a false sense of security that I would regret later that night. I wished Kalifa well, and left quickly, my mind alive with possibilities. How cold will it get? Am I weak? Am I ready? Those kids didn’t seem to care, should I? Am I going to get sick? I hurried home to batten down the hatches, changing into long sleeves and pants, gathering blankets, and a light sleeping bag, I huddled into my tent, ready to brave the arctic night, but I only ended up fighting off the far less pleasant feeling of being sweaty hot and chillllllly cold at the same time. Ok, so I am still tinkering with the arrangement, less wool here, another shirt there, maybe I’ll get a stove like kalifa’s, I may even sleep inside, like a doughy pizza, waiting to crisp! Egad… weather wreaks havoc on the psyche, especially when you don’t see it coming.
Friday, November 13, 2009
a short note on reflective surfaces and markets
Those of us with an over arching sense of self and adherence to vanity, despite salient physical attributes to validate such behavior, may find life in peace corps Mali difficult. Those of us who harbor secret perfectionist leanings and are usually reticent to expose a learned skill or behavior until internally justified or approved may find life without mirrors a challenge. This begs the age old question like a poor man’s shoes need a polish: why? The answer is simply this; I CANT SEE MYSELF. Allow me to digress a moment to construct the backdrop for this puddle deep problem. I live in a small African village; I spend my day integrating myself into the friendly confines of this community in which I have been placed. Communication being key to integration, and speaking being tantamount to communication, I find myself daily, efforting to chat up the locals with my multitude of limited ways and means. I rise with the sun, I drink tea, and I note that the sound of a sheep braying is the dumbest sound on EARTH!!. I venture out of my mud house and around my village, trying to enjoy the simplicity and honesty that a tiny brusse village can deliver like few places on earth can. Yet as I lumber out and around the gridded, waste clogged streets, it seems as though somebody else comes out with me. From where my head usually sits, his feet look like mine and he wears my clothes. His gate is as steady and rightward leaning as mine, and his wants and needs seem equally as lofty and dire as mine. Yet, when he opens his mouth (as small as mine) what comes out isn’t mine. As if on the road from my inner dialogue to my larynx, a cloaked gang of simbionese liberators have hijacked my intent, and clearly in the late stages of Stockholm syndrome, my words agree with their captors and tumble out armed and shooting, like patty Hurst with a thesaurus. Yet they are shooting blanks, in other words, I talk dumb. It would be prudent at this point to remind the reader that I have been here a mere 105 days (who’s counting) and should feel proud of what I have accomplished, linguistically speaking (redundant?) Though I can’t help but loose myself to this sly, Bambara slinging avatar. Maybe it’s my penchant for visual stimulation, or 27 years spent in a flashbulb culture, whatever the case, I find my village notably lacking in reflective material. I admit to a certain level of vanity, possibly the fault of my Libran nature, and I suppose there’s irony in having the revelation that your sense of self is tied up in your reflection, reflected back to you through a lack of reflective surfaces. Whatever the case, I find that at the end of the day I am challenged to find new ways to reconnect myself with…myself. I forget what I look like and I can’t see my lips move, I can only hear the voice of the dullard saying ‘’my head goes bad’’ or ‘’ I buy people tonight’’ in dry, staccato bambara, and I am left I bit estranged. An affliction that will pass, or something to pass the time, I am not sure, but as long as this other me leaves my house every day, bumbling bambara, wearing my cloths and walking like I do, shouldn’t he at least like to know whether or not to wipe his nose or pick sorghum out of his teeth too.
I have debated the merits of buying a mirror for weeks now. A luxury item some would say, even, I admit a bit silly. Though it does make me wonder at the nature of perception and I certainly marvel at the loss of self I often experience by simply not being able to confirm, after a weak Bambara day, that my nose is still creased in the front or that I should have gotten braces a long time ago. What stops me from buying a mirror then? Now would be a good chance to describe Dougolo. This is the name of my market town, and this is where I spend my Saturdays. I wake up, early as usual, and trot over to Kalifas house (host dad) and wait there while we ready ourselves to bike to market. It’s about 9k away, but takes usually more than an hour to get there since the caravan I travel in runs an average age of about 65 (kalifa left without me last week and I went alone, but that’s neither here nor there.) We set out from village around 8am, the mornings are cool, especially now, but the road is long. It’s more of pass than a road really, in most places craggy, sandy, sometimes smooth surface rock exposes and it feigns at being paved. We amble northward, towards dougoulo, them on their uniform, cerulean blue, fixed gear, banana seat bikes, me on my elaborate, clearly ‘’not local’’ Peace Corps issued trek mountain bike. We don’t rush, we…we can’t rush really, so we don’t. Sometimes a bike chain falls off and we stop to place it back on the worn toothed gears that have made so many trips to market already. Maybe we slow to donkey carts blocking the road, or people, it’s a busy stretch of ‘’road’’ on market mornings, maybe we get stuck in the sand; the myriad reasons why patience is virtuous in Mali manifest themselves on market day. We arrive at the market which is usually still groaning to life, vendors setting out their wares, hanging tarpaulins and plastic to block the sun. Kalifa usually has some variety of business to attend to so we agree to meet at our usual spot, the herb seller at the front of the market. Take a moment now to picture a farmers market in the United States, A brusse African market is absolutely nothing like that. Barring the universal idea of capitalism, removing goods from circulation, there are few similarities to what you may have come to accept as ‘’a market’’. Brusse markets, mine specifically, are sprawling, hectare swallowing, gladiatorial thunder domes of buying and selling. Loud, chaotic, stinky (only by the fish sellers) and remarkably well functioning, they are charged with a special energy that is uniquely African. You can find basically everything you need in Dougolo, if it’s grown and eaten in Mali it’s probably there. If it’s cheap and made of plastic, it’s probably there. There’s a man selling large cook pots, he spends all day painting them silver with aluminum paint. There are rows of women frying dough in large vats, the sickly sweet smell of hot Shea butter and millet dough assail you as you walk in. Tea, shoes, dried fish, fabric, meat, potato’s everything that becomes essential to life is available here, even…..mirrors. Ok, essential? No. Shiny? Yes. I could buy a mirror. You can find them in dougolo, large, wood framed yet overpriced, and serious transportation risk, my bike being a bit of a rough ride as my perineum will tell you. And who knows, maybe this country will change me, redirect my sense of perception and allow me to look inward, move my gaze away from that blank wall were I have already hung the nail, and re-focus it on my potential; unseen, but always assumed. Or maybe ill crack (no pun intended) and overpay for that shiny, reflective piece of mind.
Friday, October 30, 2009
crumpets be damned
September 14th: a day that should have tipped its cap to infamy…a day spent instead, in the relative abyss that was Tubaniso on ‘’off to site day.’’ Why? Because I didn’t go. I didn’t bored the gana bus with the other newly minted volunteers, I didn’t go to san, my regional capital to await installation at site and the prodigious beginnings of life ‘’en brusse’’. I stayed at tubaniso eating rice and wandering its well manicured grounds, imagining, wistfully, what that place used to look like, when it was full of people and I complained that there were too many people there. I was asked to stay behind to attend a meeting regarding the amelioration of the Shea butter making practices in my new village, and attend I did. In the limited, if not quaint bambara that I possessed at the time, I smiled and nodded my way through a conversation with my Shea butter counterpart in her Bamako home office with the aid of my gracious and able friend Nicole, Nicole of ‘’I’m replacing a peace corps megastar’’ fame. Ill spare you the details of the meeting, as I couldn’t understand a word anyone said, but it’s this linguistic netherworld that kept me in Bamako’s friendly environs for four extra days. Thinking that life in peace corps had been a breeze, the week having been spent at bars, eating ice cream, and waking up late (0700) I steeled myself for the hammers drop, the trip to site looming after this stuttering and calorie packed few days . I awoke on the floor, Spanish tile no less meaning I was still in Bamako, at 0500 on some anonymous Tuesday morning during September, Ramadan, A Muslim high holy the traditions of which I won’t defame by attempting to explain, and left the house of the friend who’d graciously allowed me to catch a taxi outside his house before dawn so as to find my bus to site. I assumed he was probably there and would have wanted to wish me well as I rode to the bus gare to claim my reserved ticket to San, Mali. Once at the station, early by a couple hours, especially by Malian standards, I claimed my ticket, stood there, met a young architect, a student of that noble profession, who kindly humored my attempts at conversation and helped me find my bus. Malians by nature are wholly kind and curious and often eager to help someone as obviously lost and incapable as myself. The ride started well, we even left on time, actually on time, at 0800. We pulled out, freedom, on to the beginnings of a new life at site, in Mali, in the bush, yeah…oh…wait ok were stopping to get gas, ok, yeah were moving now…ye…oh yeah I guess that tire should have been changed before we left....anyway here we go… yeah here we go. And once out of Bamako, go we did. The ride itself was uneventful enough, Malian music videos on TV, the man next to spitting into a bag every few seconds (I said I wouldn’t attempt to explain Ramadan’s traditions……) and ten hours later I’d arrived in San. I stuck around for a night and in the morning went to site. Installation day involved being shuttled around my region, meeting cercle chiefs, NGO’s and the gendarme before taking the brusse road (brusse road being something not quite a road, not quite not a road) that meanders a dozen kilometers into to Samabogo. The name of the village means elephant mud, as apparently there were elephants there eons ago before they wised up and went in search of water or better cell phone reception. After a brief delay to fix a gaping hole in my roof, especially annoying during the final days of rainy season, I was finally at site, to stay, to integrate, to become, all the while trying to answer the question, What the hell does that mean. They warned us well enough: you’ll spend your days wandering around, drinking tea, chatting, greeting, being unspeakably bored, and often wildly in love with the idea that this crusty, dusty mudville is you new home for two years. Daily life at site doesn’t veer to far from that well worn course and to mixed effect I DO spend my days chatting: ‘’ will you go to the fields today? ‘’ ‘’that’s good’’ ‘’ yes, it’s true, I am learning slowly ‘’ ‘’ now I go to wash, hmmm oh, yes, we do have a moon in America’’ I Do spend my days drinking tea, that potent and liquefied embodiment of the Malian ethos. They pour in rounds: Death, Life, and Love, each sweeter than the next, each a reason to push through to something else, tasty and familier. Over tea, green and charged with sugar, life moves on, by, and around you. Its all talk, or no talk at all, its universal, sugary and important. Time spent with people, next to people, near another human is an idea bound to being Malian and it’s the jumping off point from which I spend a day learning how to become part of the community that has embraced me. There are inherent challenges in these humbling and beguiling days, when we wake up to begin again what we started the day before. To begin a day wanting only one new word nesting in your vocabulary at days end, for the chance to share one genuine laugh or knowing glance with someone, to be understood. We find ourselves reduced to infancy, learning how to express ourselves, toddlers with an adult sized sense of self. It would be bombastic, if not an awkward display of hubris to say that we are re-inventing the wheel every day, but we are re evaluating the cyclical nature of the human condition, the things that drive us. Those things that kept you going at home, that defined your days are ultimately rendered useless here; those are the things that strip away. We strive as humans to find a common ground, bound by inherent truths about who we are and what it means to be here, these pursuits are always filtered through our own self imposed mental caste, a series of access points into the psychology of our environment, we seek a symbiosis with this place which we find comfortable, yet when a physiological need for harmony becomes a selfish conceit, as it’s want to do, we become inebriated by the illusion that we are somehow adept at navigating the human condition. It’s our specific type of regeneration that has kept humanity as the most vocal, destructive and capable organism on earth for millennia, and it’s the same process that allows us to formulate a cadre of mental jiggery to protect ourselves, intuit, brag, defend, and ask for extra fries. I feel as though I am often left wholly exposed, these eloquent adaptations gone, any rational notion of defending myself or dancing a verbal jitterbug around a taut or charged exchange has fled to the higher ground of my newly challenged sense of self, ground to far afield to be of any use. It’s a new ‘’me ‘’ I’m cultivating in a powerfully familiar way. Being given the chance to look over walls I have built and to sift through those things I have gathered around me to define and protect me has enlivened my senses, brought great joy, infuriated me beyond reproach, and allowed me to re connect with a human spirit I had marginalized through wrote conditioning. To be awake at site is to engage in a constant process of regeneration, shed, and re build, learn to redefine and explain, play with the idea of my place in the world which is an idea that becomes more malleable every day. and of course drinking all the tea i can stomach
Monday, July 27, 2009
the day to day. in brief
5:45/6:00: wake up. mali is a musilm country and the call to pray from the vilage mosque assure that i start y day
6:00...:wash, we dont have running water or electricity, so i bath out of a bucket in the confines of my pit toilet walls
7:00: i eat with my family, ussually a rice porridge, out of a commual bowl with big ladel spoons
8:00 go to class, 3 and a half hours of language classes, bambara, and after that my brain hurts. my day is carried out in three languages, french, bambara and english and my brain is working hrad to keep up
11:45 go home for lunch, communal bowl again, but this time i eat with my hands, usually rice with a sauce, and maybe some gristely meat.
AFTERLUNCH: TEA. the malians lover there tea, ussually green, and usually with an unholy amount of sugar...unholy! in fact that put a bit too much sugar in almost everything the eat, and dental hygine isnt at a premium here, they still smile alot though
2:30, tea/siesta is over and back to class til 5ish, then back home. dinner in the dark with the family, its dark here by 7:30, what with the equater so near, and that makes dinner my favorite meal, i eat with my hands and as a novice to this art i prefer the relative aninimity of night to worknig on the learning curve.
after dinner i usully hide out from the malarial mosquitos and study a bit in my room. often i am asleep by 9 and back at it the next day.
my days are peppered with lengthy greetins in bambara, the wailing steel echo of the call to prayer, wich i have grown to sort of like, lots of sun, really a feat for the senses. i go to sleep prossesing alot of sensory information and i dream very vividly . life is good at home stay and although it may sound somewhat dull, everything is sort of new again and sometimes it feels like i am relearning to walk.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
YUP, LOOKS LIKE AFRICA
Friday, July 10, 2009
ALMOST THERE
Monday, July 6, 2009
Well, here goes nothing!!
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Hey, how 'bout a list!
Bag, 1 large green Gregory brand with lots of straps
Bag, 1 orange water proof roll top
Bag, 1, red for day trips
Cup, 1 blue enamel, speckled white
Tooth brush, 1 oral-B, yellow
Dentalfloss, 4 mini packs oral-b (thanks receptionist)
Essential oils, 4, rosemary, peppermint, lavander, tea tree, used in first aid, and smelling
Candles, 9, 9 hour burn time, just beacuse
Comb, 1, unbreakable
Band-aids, 24, hope not to use
Steel camp mirror, 1
Homeopathic spray, 1, for pain, et al
Guitar, 1, Classical orange
Guitar strings, 2 pack, martin hard tension
Tuning fork, 1, Emajor
Frisbee, 1, blue
Mini chess set, 1, black
Crappy sewing kit, 1, just because
Water broof box, 1, it rains there
Hohner harp, 1, Key of C
AARP travel clock, 1, thanks gramma
Clothes, assorted, numerous
Dr.Bronner soap, 2, for everything
Bungees, 6, for strappin'
Radio shack brand cassette recorder, 1, grey
Friday, June 12, 2009
count down T minus a bunch a days....
In those moments of doubt; ''its so far'' for so long'' ''im scared'' I take comfort in the little things that humanize the scope of what it is I am about to do. To acknowledge that the flight to africa from sweet sweet Paris is shorter than the one TO Paris from the USA is to keep a wee finger on the otherwise great ideological distances being coverd here. to think that i am closer to a french bistro from the bush, than I would be sitting at home watching iron chef is some how comferting . A last note. these blog entries thus far seem regular, and a bit quixotic if not driveling, but once i am ''in the shit'' as they say, I imagine that the tone and color will change dramatically so look foward to far greater tales of adventure and heroic deeds, and stuff about eating rice every day, and heat, and mud and....
Saturday, May 30, 2009
OH boy.....NEWS!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
So soon, so so....not soon
Nervous? NO. although my french is coming along slowly and not speaking the local language does render me somewhat usless. I do study everyday, but my god! how many homonyms can one language have, and they certainly dont seem to care much for economy in there use of the alphabet, but its so darn purty so i plug away. these entries will be spare between now and the time i leave, maybe an update pre trip, but once abroad i hope to use this as a link to life as i knew it. for what ever it was worth.