home safely!

Hello world! The third and final leg of my flight home landed in Logan airport at 7 last night. I'm writing from Woods Hole, where I'll be until school starts next week.

Photos will be posted to the blog once they're all downloaded to my computer. Hope to see you soon!

Love,
Djeneba

trash day YAY

Nothing like picking up trash to bridge cultural differences. I think it’s gross, you think it’s gross, but we’re both all about getting our hands dirty to clean it up.

Today was Sikoroni’s first ever Journée de Salubrité, organized by MHOP, a youth group, and several local GIEs – unions of trash collectors, sort of. The plan was to get everyone together in the morning and get rid of as much garbage as possible in a central location. We wanted to raise awareness and enthusiasm about picking up trash – all as part of Cari’s project to put a functional waste management system into this town.

Frankly, I thought it would flop. I expected only a few people to show up, and didn’t foresee much enthusiasm. I was pleasantly surprised! In all there were about 20 of us, going from house to house and taking their trash to a central dumpster via wheelbarrow and trash-moto (think motorcycle with a pickup truck bed in the back). We also used shovels and rakes to clear up a couple random trash piles in the area. By 1pm, the dumpster was almost full and people were still coming with buckets-o-trash.

What pleased me most about this event was the mish-mash of people coming together for the same cause. There were a bunch of GIE guys. Most of them were pretty badass, especially this one who would move piles of lord knows what kind of waste – with his bare hands. Some teenage boys and girls came with CAMS, the youth group. A bunch of MHOP’s health committee members showed up… as did two microfinance committee women Nasuru and Maimouna.

These two were great – they came decked out in nice outfits, jewelry, and handbags. Don’t ask me why. (I suppose the microfinance committee ladies are a little more educated than most in the town, and like to keep up a good appearance?) I took one look and mentally gave them 10 minutes before they’d head home. There was one initial episode of slime spilling on Maimouna’s dress. She was not happy about this, and tried to rinse it out with water. Soon, though, they got really into it and proved me wrong. They kicked ass, handling shovels and lifting wheelbarrows like the GIE workers. I have wonderful photos of this, and will post ASAP.

Other people who helped out: Niang, of course (MHOP’s director). Me, the token tubabu. Finally, and to my surprise, a lot of unaffiliated neighbors lent a hand! One guy took my shovel and got right into it. Women and kids practically flocked to the dumpster with buckets of garbage on their heads. The event became a real community effort, and I couldn’t shake Obama’s catch-phrase “Yes we can!” from my mind. Cheesy, but true.

It all put me in a really good mood, and I felt very integrated with the community. We were all trying to do the same thing – there was an unspoken understanding between everyone. Afterwards, we exchanged lots of “A ni baara” ‘s and “A diara!” ‘s. The first means “to you and your work.” The second means “that was super fuckin great, yo!”

the sikoroni zaban

Yo, wow, it’s down to my final week in Bamako. I’m the only one left! Four of the five US summer volunteers have returned to our beautiful homeland. Cari was the last to depart, last Wednesday night. Not gonna lie: at first I felt pretty lonely here. The first few days were rough. But now I’m finally getting into the swing of things, totally owning this city. I spend a lot more time with the fam. I go to the market when I want to, only stopping in the butiki’s where I need to stop. I speak ONLY in French and Bambara – and the thing is, I barely even notice that I’m not speaking English! Clearly the past 2.5 months have made me more comfortable with new languages. In fact, one of the homestay moms just complimented me on the Bambara. I don’t think I can do an exact translation, but she said something like “Your Bambara is finally landing.” Or “starting to land”. Or something. (This is in direct contrast to the cyber café matron, who regularly tells me that I don’t speak French well enough. Don’t even get me started.)

I’d like to revise my previous assertion that Sikoroni is akin to a kumquat. Yes, kumquats are small. They’re nice. But they’re just too exotic and classy for this place. Instead, I venture to say that Sikoroni is like a zaban. What, pray tell, is a zaban? It’s a fruit that, as far as I know, only exists in Bamako. It looks really grody from the outside, but when you crack it open there are tons of delicious sweet/sour (think Warhead) seeds to eat. Similarly, the Siks is indeed grody to look at. Mud, dust, trash, dirty stagnant water, etc. I saw a kid peeing in the middle of the market’s main drag this morning, for example. My house has one bathroom for 30 people, and its courtyard has a dirt floor. Every time I try to enjoy a mango, zillions of flies come and swarm my personal bubble.

Deep down, though, Sikoroni definitely has charm. Once you get past the unappetizing shell. First of all, it has great views of the city. Climbing to the top of the main hill, you can look out on everything and see the Niger river. Secondly, the people couldn’t be more friendly. (That is, excluding the “tubabu”-yelling children. We don’t talk about them.) I’ve befriended a woman who lives in the neighborhood, Sita, who showed me how to make “to” one day. (“To” is a slimy, disgusting Malian food made out of mushed up grains.) She just called me over and said “Hey, you, we’re going to make to tomorrow morning. See you at 9am.” I couldn’t really say no. Since then, I’ve stopped and chatted with her several times. She speaks French, but mostly insists on communicating in Bambara. She’s only 32 but has 4 kids. Anyway, point is that people here are always friendly, always in a good mood, always ready to sit around and chitty-chat. A third thing: culture. Part of me dreads heading back home to strip malls, MTV and consumerism. I’m finding it hard to describe how it’s so different here – maybe it’s that funerals last a week+, involving less caskets and flowers but more gathering, mourning, and laughing together. Maybe it’s that everyone knows which family group their last name derives from, AND the clan’s history. (They use this information to crack jokes at members of other, “rival”, families.) Maybe I’m just exoticizing what I see here, calling it more culturally rich than America because it’s so different. Whatever. But it counts as a tasty seed of the Sikoroni zaban.

a week in the countryside

Hi hi, everyone!

Apologies for the utter lack of communication coming from my end. Cari and I spent the last week exploring outside of Bamako. Since I was living out of my backpack, I thought it best to leave the computer behind. (I did, however, bring my USB key with me. Aaand just realized that it is still in a lovely internet café…in Ségou. Oops.)

Otherwise, our trip was GREAT. We travelled east, stopping one night each in Ségou, Djenné, and Bandiagara. From there, we hiked three days in Dogon Country, a super-isolated and super-beautiful region of the country. Yesterday we bit the bullet and took a 10-hour bus ride all the way back to Sikoroni. Our reward: cheeseburger and banana split at Broadway Café, the one authentic American restaurant here.

I am so happy to have seen Mali’s “bush”, if only because I realized how little there is to see. The bus would go hours and hours passing nothing but fields, grass, dirt, and trees. When it encountered villages it would stop, and people selling snicky-snacks would pile on advertising their wares – “shi be! gateaux be! ji be! shefan be!” a.k.a. shea fruit, sweet bread, water, hardboiled eggs. Not exactly a Mickey D’s off of I-95, but it definitely had a similar feel.

In Ségou we took a boat ride, in Djenné we saw the world’s largest mud structure (a big fat mosque), but the Dogon hike was definitely the highlight of our adventure. We hired a guide, Hamidou, who walked us from village to village along a magnificent cliff side. In some of them we met the dugutigi, giving him a couple kola nuts as a sign of respect. At night we stayed in campements, little tourist lodgements in each town. Very rustic and mostly all outdoors, including sleeping arrangements – which consisted of a foam mattress under a mosquito net. (Catch that, Mom?) Everything was so different from Bamako. Fewer people, fewer – like, zero – stores, less electricity…although at one campement there was a shower-from-above arrangement, instead of the standard bucket bath!

This paragraph clearly does not suffice to describe the trip. I’m having a hard time deciding what to write about. Hopefully these photos will help.

So yeah, now it’s back to BKO for 2 weeks. Crunch time for the microfinance project! I have to finish drafting an info sheet about other microfinance orgs in the city, finalize the borrower profiles, and print out 50 literacy/math workbooks. I was supposed to put together education materials for an entrepreneurship course, but it definitely won’t get done before I leave. Either way, I plan to start on it. There are tons of other little things to finish, and I’m a little intimidated looking at it all. Kind of looking forward to a busy couple weeks, though. Can’t believe I’ll be home so soon!!

Mali-love to you all,

Djeneba