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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment