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....