shotty observations, poorley transitioned from previous blog

Its difficult to call the Malian approach to hygiene an approach, accepting rather that a skirting or diversionary effort would be a more apt description. including myself amongst the population, I say that WE live in villages clogged with sewage, animal waste, and other such unsavory detritus and that WE live comfortably amongst these things because WE don’t know better. The discrepancies between what a Malian considers ritually hygienic, and acceptable in terms of care, and disposal of waste are vast. This is a group of people that wash themselves regularly, stopping at seemingly any and all occasion to poor water on their feet, and hands out of small, plastic, tea kettle-like pots called salidaka’s. swishing water in their mouth and spitting to finalize the gesture ( and all Malians are excellent spitters) they perform this act seemingly 5 or 6 or more times a day in addition to a full bucket bath taken before dinner. The behavior borders on idiosyncratic, almost quirky. No trip on public transport would be complete, it seems, without the driver stopping to wash and swish at any opportune time. This isn’t a behavior limited by any class, or gender stipulations, men women and children all do it, and all with the grace of the seasoned performer as though it were a survival trait, a line well rehearsed to the point of being inseparable from other biological process. Assuming, as they say, that cleanliness IS in fact next to godliness, than Malians are scrambeling to rent a time share in the big man’s neighboorhood. They wash so compulsively it almost seems a subconscious resignation to the fact that while there skin may stay damp and anointed, there terrestrial realm is in shambles. I mean no degradation by simply pointing out that the sanitation services we enjoy at home and almost come to take for granted, aren’t even fleeting notions here, they are completely absent and unacknowledged. I have only been here for 6 months, granted, but I have never, not even once, seen a Malian pick up a piece of trash in any feigning effort at cleanliness or beautification. I suppose that’s not to say it doesn’t happen but there’s no precedent to do so. It becomes easier at this point to start to make a lot of connections relating to the presumed stagnation or ennui inherent in the capacity to want for change here. Rural Malians live by the notion that subsistence farming and Allah’s divine intervention are really the only necessities in their lives, and not necessarily in that order. It is true and noble, the efforts which Malians put into their own survival, indomindable spirits all, though Imagine what you or someone like you would do if you found a small child, three or four years old, wandering un-attended around the streets of your town playing with an empty pesticide pump or a used dropper syringe, yet that’s a familiar site in a rural village. Substitute the aforementioned garbage with any other of the myriad varieties of garbage that one might find on the ground and that’s a typical and readily ignored scenario in the country. How then do Malians avoid what you would assume would be a rampant and constant influx of disease. It’s not necessarily true that they do. Figures ARE misleading as to the average life span. It is low in Mali but saying simply that, at 28, I am roughly middle aged here isn’t quite accurate. The average Malian woman has 7 children. For a morbid, yet oddly practical reason they do so because the infant death rate here is so high. This is a fact largly responsible for skewing the figures on average life span which I believe stands at 53. Allah of course wills that a child be taken from a mother, usually because of poor nutrition or disease, with disturbing frequency. There is in fact a tradition of not naming a baby until 7 full days, presumably to justify the effort. There is also the thought here that of course the more kids you have the more help you’ll have in the fields. Like I said, morbid, yet oddly practical or at least adapted to the stark reality of their situation. In strange similarities, the functionality of the Malian health care infrastructure mirrors our own in America.it seems each in our own ways, we are making health care difficult and almost nonexistent for the poorest amongst us. A staggering majority of Malians will sooner visit an herbal, natural healer before seeing a ‘’modern doctor’’. The primary motivating factor there is the cost, that and possibly a misguided or ornery assumption that the expenditure isn’t worth it if Allah has willed otherwise. This being the case, many people, specifically women and children, go untreated because the husband refuses to pay for treatment, weather he’s nodding to gods will or simply not willing. These aren’t unusual cases, though it should be noted that those with the money or the foresight do seek western style medicine if they can. I think it’s worth noting as well, that I am aware of only one case of malaria in my village. ( accepting that there could be many more) the odd thing about this particular case is that the child who has contracted the disease lives in one of the villages richest families, a family that can afford med’s though rarely are the right meds given. Headache pills, expectorants, stomach medicine, pain relievers all meted out, all seemingly as a cure-all for those with the money to buy in. Most average sized villages have a ‘’medical unit’’, with a ‘’doctor’’ though the medical training of many Malian doctors in dubious at best. As well, every week at the average market you can find the medicine man, or multiple men, with carts or tables full of off brand….very off brand, medicines that people can buy. pills, powders, syrups and creams, The packaging is usually comically bad with limited instruction on how to use the medicine, and I know that the instructions are limited because they are often in English, a difficult language for the average rural Malian to read, or understand! I am unsure of how many illnesses have been perpetuated by bad packaging or general lack of information, but I have personally been offered Ben-gay to both eat and put on an open wound, and I have been asked what a desiccant package was and whether or not one was to eat it. These were western meds left behind in my village by visitors and I have no Idea how long they were being misused before I was approached. I was approached by a traditional healer with these meds, pleased at having acquired something exotic, and obviously foreign. Traditional healing in Mali IS generously acknowledged by the government, with money being put into researching both the actual healing properties of the plants used, and the proliferation of the medicine’s produced, making them more available to the average Malian, in fact, the average malian goes first for herbal, natural drugs, nearly 80% of the time over western style meds, and mostly out of neccessity . In Bamako, and regiona capitals, there are gonernment funded labs devoted to the research and usage of these plants, and a concerted effort id being made to amiliorate the practive of using herbal meds. This is a relatively progressive effort by the government, when you stop to imagine a time in which the US government would explore the validity of herbs over pharmaceuticals. Having yet to get a lot of solid information about what plants are actually being used, and not recognizing any myself, I have had several concoctions, teas mostly, made from boiled plants, sugar is always added, and they are usually tasty, most seemingly aimed at some variety of stomach ailment. I have seen traditional healing take on an even more ritualistic and hypothetical tone. I have seen sick children brought to my host father, a healer, and smeared in a loose grid pattern, with shea butter, all the while the healer’s mouth making tiny patting, or puffing motions, as if to expel the illness or draw it into himself. With no verification as to whether there was any subsequent change in the child, I am left to simply assume on blind faith that what’s practiced, works. This position I think, is the only position that most Malians can comfortablly take. Faith based medicine. Faith as medicine or a culture of practiced faith, with a faith in cultural practice. Malians do most things out of neccesity first, and personal care is no exception.

cccooolldddd

This week’s tale is a tale of change, bandied about over campfires and funeral pyres around the world for eons. A tale of woe, a tale of mystery, and surprise. A tale of inadequate insulation. As we wander our sunny village streets and draw grimy water from our wells, as we tell just one more bean joke under the stately Malian sun, it stalks. Behind the papaya tree, gold and green in a pale afternoon sun. Seeping in through the cracks in our houses or the cracks in my resolve. Insipid and yet obvious, proud and un yielding this monster of consistency, this creature of habit looms, lays in wait until her number is drawn. And according to the “Year of cute kitties” calander I’m looking at, the time is neigh. to the accustomed yet ill equipped Malian or worse still the incredulous volunteer, this behemoth of change strikes with more shock and awe than a George Bush themed weapons rodeo, eliciting a unison and universal cry across the arid sub-Saharan plain…..NENE BE NENE BE!! That means its cold people! And surly you mustn’t doubt that I am as shocked as you are. Mali and her ‘’seasons’’ can be loosely classified around what’s going in or coming up out of the ground. We do have ‘’wet season’’ and wet it is, rain in torrential and steady bursts, relative to the 7 months of the year when it doesn’t rain, It can seem pretty damp. There is also ‘’ hot season’’, and no that’s not some kind of passive aggressive Malian irony, there is a time of year that is decidedly hotter than the rest, temperatures I’m told top off at around 120 degrees. (Ill spare mentioning that that is farenheit, if it were Celsius we’d all be dead.) Yet this does leave room for the inevitable fall from grace, or stumble into absurdity that is ‘’Cold Season’’. It’s a relative term to be sure, with day time highs still hovering in the mid eighties, but at night, when she strikes, well…you just don’t see it coming.
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.

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.

crumpets be damned

Dear reader, months have passed, days continue to elapse……..daily, as my time in the Peace Corps rolls on. With brief concession to my near fanatical devotion to bad blogging, I have returned and would like to make amends by offering you this rambling summery of my thoughts, observations, and emotions during those tepid and largely computer free days. As of my last entry I was still laboring away my home stay village, and as I’m now nearly a month and a half into life at site, ill spare you the gritty, and largely uninspired details of those final home stay weeks. And as I am sure that you’ve all no doubt graduated to a more advanced and informed blog reading populous, having by your own acknowledgement, followed many of my friends to their sites and shared their experience in their well maintained and frequently updated blogs, ill simply skip ahead, as though I’d never left you.
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

the day to day. in brief

hi everyone, blog blackout for a bit because of Homestay. homestay for the uninformed is sort of like an incubation period. we volunteers are grouped off 6, 7, 8 or so to a group and scattered around greater (much greater) Bamako at a series of villages, living with individual host families and taking language and cross cultural classes all day. I am studying a language called Bambara and after only 8 days i would say i feel good about my chances. So a typical day at home stay will certainly vary from a typical day at my permenant site, my real 2 year home, but its a good training ground so heres a typical day.

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.

YUP, LOOKS LIKE AFRICA

yeah, we inally landed on african soil after a time bending 21 hours of travel although in fairness to time bending travelers everywhere, 8 of those hours were spent staving off sleep in the ''E'' terminal of Charles DeGaulle airport. We left philadelphia at 6 pm on the 9th of july and after 7 hours of psuedo sagacious french stewards, crap fish pudingesque dinner entrees and alot to much turbulance, we landed and the aformentioned sleep staving began. i thought that holding of sleep until at least our flight to bamako would give me a shot at a better nights sleep once in our training site. the flight to bamako was much smoother and 2 hour quicker thus better. If you havnt had the chance to fly over the entire north -south expanse of the sahara desert, you have probely done more interesting things with your time. At least two hours of ceaseless, un erring desert. It may role, it may undulate and inspire awe in generations of touraegs, but from an Air France 747 airbus, it lulls, and boggles the mind. tiny Lego block house will eventually pop up on what you assume is the cusp of civilization, but no, and better still but why!! how did these people end up so far out, in so inhospitable a place. but as the sun goes down and throws a foggy orange film over the preceedings, darkness muscles in and the limited Bamako lights start to pop up. a quiet, easy decent into so much unknown....THENYOUREINTHEBAMAKOAIRPORTANDITSAMADRUSHTENDEEPTHREEWIDESCRAMBELING FORBAGSPUSHTHROUCUSTOMSPASSINGONOFFERSFORHELPFORAHANDANDOUTTOTHEBUSLOADUP....quiet again, and a drive through the city reveals people, lots of people and a pulse of activity. Roadside stands and tiny fires from the hawker selling wears on the road out. shacks with SIM cards and plastic jugs, the brand new peugot dealer, seedy nightclubs, and the Niger river, wide, black ebbing, dirty and high because its the rainy season. But Bamako passes and the lights go out and the rickety green people haulers roll by in the other direction, and down redder dirt roads the training facility creeps up. Non descript, dark and holding its scope until the first light of a new day in Africa, we straggled off the bus and in our silent, clamy, uncertainty made our way to hour lodging. mosquito nets and three beds to a room, we lay our bags down and head to the refectoire for snacks and blank stares, then most likley bed. the next day brought sun, humidity, forms to fill out termite hills large as sub-zero's and a new landscape to reckon, all whiloe shakng off the greatest ''where the hell am i when you wake up'' feeling ever. each day a new one and each day a new challenge. we leave the comound tuesday for our home stay, blinders off and africa in stereo. more later

ALMOST THERE

to those whoe care, i am almost in africa. the good stuff hasnt started yet, but after an over night turbulant sleepless flight to pairs, im half way to Bamako. just one more five hour flight to go, after this 7 hour lay over. since the french insist on doing strange and disorienting things with there keyboards, I must be brief. Love to all and more to come

Well, here goes nothing!!

So as I sit here today, July 6th 2009, I am roughly 37 hours 57 minutes and 23 seconds, give or take, from the labor pains and ultimate birthing of a new life, or at least a drive to the airport during the first sun rise i'll have seen in some time. I am leaving Greenville, SC en route to MALI via Philadelphia, PA and Paris, France. Think of me this saturday morning as you wake up and begin the day....I'll be in africa!! but before I go I have a few thoughts on the matter I would like to share. First, AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!. Second, wow that really snuck up on me!! third, WOW that REALLY snuck up on me!! We ( my pressumed fellow volunteers) will share many things in common and I would imagine the interminable wait for this day to arrive is one of those things, yet now that its here may I be the first to ask: REALLY? something so ominous and looming, so grand and so infinite often only stays that way though a constant suppression of its arrival, and now that the day hath come what does this turn into? The more intrepid among us may say that its something to be grabbed by a horn like protrudance and wrestled into submission, others may look away, squinting through sunburnt lids until it resembles somthing still shadowy yet accesible. Still others, and may I count my self among this group, will face openly and honestly this thing that only throuh experience, will define it self. I must be glib here because i know know other way to describe what I am or am not getting myself into. I realized the other day that I COULD do this alone, I am strong and futher, I didnt NEED anyones approval, yet its BECAUSE of my wonderful family that I WANT to do this, and its in part because of them that I WILL do this. Enough thanks cant be given to my parents, granparents, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, et al, for being so engaged, so caring, and so accesible!! I love you all and I cant wait to repay your kindness with fantastic stories!!!!!

Hey, how 'bout a list!

without further delay I present ''MY STUFF: the list edition''. I felt like maybe it would be helpful if not appeasing to offer the reader a sampling of my packing list. I love a good list, though one that usually denotes status, like top ten largest cities or fattest mammels. though there is certainly an appeal in deconstructing something large and complete into incongruous bits and bobbles. so here is a detaild account of what I may bring to mali, I know I am probely forgetting something, I just hope that I dont leave the iron on.

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

count down T minus a bunch a days....

well, the day doth fast approach! I think today is the 12, or maybe the 11th, irrelevent because in less than a months time, myself and about 79 of my newest friends (i really hope i like at least a third of these people) will be boarding a jet plane bound for Paris, then onwards to bamako. I am going into the peace corps for a myrid of reasons, and some I am sure i've not even hit upon yet. I mean I have traveld, I have ''seen some stuff'' but really how often do you step this far for your happy place with such a lax tether back to the world you knew? I will be in Philadelphia on the morning of the 8th july. Ill be there for staging and so anyone who wants to call me before i drop out, thats the day to do it. before noon or after 7 pm please! the 9th of july will be spent getting vaccinations, going over last minute details like how to find your way out of the bamako airport, and the flying, oh the flying......7 hours to paris were we will have an 8 hour layover. I will do everything in my power to get to the musee d'orsey in that time, because, yeah ill rough it, but one last bit of high culture will do the body good. then...AND THEN, a five hour flight to Bamako, arriving in the dark....but thats sounds good. we get to wake up fresh and on our first real day we get to start with morning smells, and light and sleepy where the hell am I eyes.
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....

OH boy.....NEWS!

SO, yippie and hooray, it finally came. The ominous hanging chad that was my future as been punched in full. I got a big, blue attahce type contraption in the mail last week from my friends at peace corps HQ. Seems they hadnt forgotten about me and, in fact, they want to send me to MALI!! After so much talk about living in the Mauritanian desert, i think thick niger river red clay is a real boon to the psyche. July, as previously assumed, is still the jumping off point, probely from philadelphia( I dont know that much yet, did I mention they like to make you squirm) and once in mali I will go in for about 11 weeks of training. That I suppose is what makes or breaks the volunteer. Its a time to re affirm youre will and probely re-evaluate your sanity. I have been reading alot of other blogs latey and i keep reading about people, groups even, who upon arrivel in country and within the first few days just turn around and go home. I guess the more i think about it, who isnt going over there with some small voice screaming GET OUT!! YOUR CRAZY!! i mean i am commited but still, is this whole effort a little nuts? anyway, if there are those in my group who DO leave early i will thank them in advance because they will have gone back home for that little voice inside us all.

So soon, so so....not soon

here we are on the first day of me aknowledging the future. Peace Corps service fast approaches, and yet it doesnt. It looks as though ill be stateside until at least sometime in july, but then making others wait seems to be the raison d'etre for the PC, so i am supposedly content in doing so. with a vauge " maybe west africa'' as the only bit of geography i can currently pine away for, i really dont know how to feel other than joyous at the prospect, but I might as well be going to space, because i know as much about that as i do about anywere else they may send me.
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.