Tea for twenty and two kinds of tea

Tea
I'm learning the best techniques to making the immense amounts of foam necessary for real Malian tea. And by tea, I mean tea flavored sugar with foam. Everyone drinks this sweet tea all the time-- it's a great excuse to just hang out and share stories with family and friends. There are three rounds of tea per pot, two shot-sized glasses used, and everyone shares. I get the other tea for breakfast each morning. It's lipton and it's so cute that they pronounce it lip-tone. The concept of "communal" extends to everything, from a small lollipop shared by all of the children in my concession (walled in group of multiple families/houses) to articles of clothing and our dinner plates. The picture is from our training center of our first attempt to eat from the communal bowl with our hands. This is how I eat dinner every night in homestay-- no utensils unless it's a liquid. I do like sharing, but we've been told to be careful what it is that we're sharing, considering that sicknesses are other things that get passed around. But for more good news, I haven't gotten sick yet! Knock on wood, but I think that I have even adjusted to the food. Granted, I've been spoiled beyond belief by my family, but I seem to be one of the few that have made it this far without a trip to the medical unit.

My homestay

I know that you have been anxiously awaiting details about the family with whom I've been staying the past few weeks and it comes down to this: They are AMAZING. I'm very very lucky to live with a family in a concession of people who are more than patient with my struggling Bambara language skills... of course I'm guessing this is because my stumbling along can be pretty entertaining at times. As Mali is approximately 90% Muslim, my homestay family is as well. The Islamic faith allows for a man to take multiple wives and my homestay father has two, one of whom I'm named after and the other who has taken me on as both a daughter and a friend.
Speaking of my name, I didn't know what it was for the first two days at my homestay. Children here usually take their father's last name and keep it forever. Women do not take their husband's name. Therefore, I assumed that my last name was my homestay father's and not my host mother's. When they said that my name was Majo Bagayogo (pronounced Ma-jo, with a nasalized a), I thought that it was one word, and that overwhelmed me. I figured it out when my brother wrote it out for me as two separate names. One of my nieces then henna-ed my hand (see picture), with my mispelled name, but I didn't care because it was gorgeous! This is also the niece who was at the donkeyoro (dance club) with me on a Monday and gave birth to a lovely baby boy on that Friday. Fantastic.

I sigi!!

"YOU, as a guest, HAVE TO SIT HERE, NOW!" It's been fun being a guest and not so fun, as we are expected to sit around to be looked at and touched for hours on end. Of course, not exclusively, and now I'm able to defer some of the attention by offering to help, but I cannot escape being offered the best seat in the joint, wherever that may be and regardless of the others who could also be sitting in that chair. I actually prefer sitting on a mat when I can and my Bambara is improving quickly enough that I can now politely turn down the offered seat and pop a squat on the nearing kuru (small stool).

Our town is very pretty right now-- the rainy season ensures that it stays super green. Although we've missed the official mango season, the trees are everywhere and the fruits still taste delicious to me! Both corn and peanuts will be harvested within the upcoming months and I cannot wait for it to be avocado season!

Learning Bambara (Bamanankan kalan in Bambara) is great and take place in the school yard of the local high school. This picture is actually of the 5 students at our homestay village taking French, but just imagine three of us doing the exact same thing. We study for approximately 6ish hours every day and then practice it when we return to our families. That being said, I'm so impressed with our group: after studying Bambara for only 3 weeks, we all speak Bambara at least to the same level, if not higher, than our French!! Crazy! This is great considering that we are about to head out to places that will speak even less French.

The eight of us at our homestay village get along incredibly well and I can't believe that soon I won't have this group to lean on/play cards will all the time. Our placements are distributed throughout the country. We cooked dinner together the other night with help from our Language and Culture Facilitators (LCFs). We killed, plucked, cooked and ate the rooster in the picture to the right. We bought it the day before at the market and so it spent the night at my friend's house in her coop. The funny story about the chicken is that earlier on the market day we had been discussing what we needed to cook our own dinner-- things like which veggies, seasonings, etc. On our way to the market, we were also deciding who was going to buy what materials so spread out the work of bargaining. One of our LCFs was going to help with the purchasing of the chicken, since we had absolutely no idea. In jest, we started throwing out ridiculous numbers of chickens that we would get, so I said something like "how about 15 so that we each get 1 1/2 of a chicken?" Well, we all reconvened after making our purchases and Elizabeth tells the story of helping to buy the rooster that was then tied to a pole outside our teachers' house.

It was later in the afternoon and the sellers in the market were starting to leave. Our LCF had to actually ask the person with the chickens to get them out of the coop already attached to the top of a public transportation van/bus (called a bache). Elizabeth waited patiently while our LCF did the bargaining. She was handed one chicken... and then another, and another until she holding 7 chickens by the feet. At this point, she doesn't want to interrupt, but thankfully she did and asked if they were decided which one to get. "I thought we were getting 13 for all of us," said our LCF, and Elizabeth quickly answers, "No, no no no! One will be plenty!"

We all got a good laugh out of this and have since learned that our sarcasm still may be hard to understand after a spending a few weeks with well-trained LCFs... and that we need to take care to be clear in our communication. One chicken was more than enough work to prepare and adequate for the delicious pasta sauce that we made. And now I know how to kill and cook a chicken. We'll save those pictures for later.

The next big step/ride

Tomorrow morning I ship out to the actual site where I will end up for the next two years after I swear in on September 12th. The picture is of the group of futher PC volunteers to live and work in the Sikasso region. Today I met my homologue, or the person who will be my main contact in the village where I live. I'll spend a week there and get my first introduction to the town and their people. Although no volunteer has actually been placed at this site before, one volunteer did her last 6 months starting some projects from her site a few km away. My house is newly renovated and I can't wait to check it out! I'm a bike ride away from my current homestay village, which is also our market town, so I will be able to visit my homestay family all of the time or whenever I'm traveling away from/ back to my town. The wife of one of my homestay brothers was raised in my new town and has told me a few people to visit once I get there.

Placement!

Avocados, shea nuts, and mangoes-- I'm set!

I'll be spending the next two years of my Malian existence in the Sikasso region of Mali where it is greener and wetter (and full of yummy yummy foods). Bamako will still be my closest regional capital and I'll be able to make it to the city pretty quickly whenever you come to visit :-) This is definitely where I wanted to be placed. My current homestay village, with which I am more than content, is actually very close as well, so if I ever get "homesick," I'll just hop on my bike for a nice ride.

My site is a "new" site-- "new" (and not new new) because another volunteer finished her two years of service with a few months in this village. As if I didn't already have enough reading material, this volunteer has prepared a lot of great information that I will definitely benefit from. My village is smaller than Waddington, but I can't wait to be immersed in a really personalized environment where I will more than likely really get to know everyone. Out of all of the Small Enterprise Development volunteers, my site is the smallest. Woo!

Some potential projects include work with shea nuts (for lotions, foods, etc), chicken raising (eggs...), and microfinance, among other things... and... that's all I know for now! That's it! I'll be sending more details when I find them out.

Tomorrow we head back to our homestay for a week before making our first trek to our actual site. Cannot wait.

Steam baths

While I'm still in the "honeymoon" stage of my time in Mali, I figured that I would write up some of my favorite things so far.

--watching myself steam as I pour cold water over my head on a cooler morning after sweating through the night
--dinners of french fries, tomato, onion and hard-boiled egg
--the most amazing (and frequent) heat lightning
--more beautiful stars (lolow in Bamanankan-na) than I ever thought possible-- even more gorgeous than those in the non-light polluted north country
--babies
--never being cold
--"we wish you a merry christmas" ringtones

And this is just the beginning...

Aw bissimila!

Thousands of "aw bissimila" posters greeted us as we slowly got off the plane from France (Aw Bissimila means Ya'll are Welcome" in Bambara, which about 80% of the country speaks). I had spent most of the flight watching the streaming video of what we were flying over-- from the Mediterranean onto the never-ending Sahara desert. I was surprised as we arrived at the Bamako airport just how light and busy the city was, even at 9:30 pm at night. While I was in Kampala, Uganda, electricity shortages meant that lighting was questionable and usually every other night. Of course, Bamako is more likely to have consistent electricity than most other places because it is the capital.

The 77 Peace Corps trainees filled up a number of airconditioned Peace Corps SUVs and a bus with ourselves and our luggage-- each person with two huge bags at least. After a drive through the outskirts of the city, we got out at our training village. My glasses fogged up as if I were entering my house after playing outside in the snow, except this fog was humidity. There isn't even a word in Bambara for snow.

We've gone through sessions outlining health, safety, language and cross-cultural concerns. We've had interviews with our sector (mine is Small Enterprise Development) and language leaders. We've played and danced at the "cultural festival" organized at our training village. We've had so much fun-- it's great to be with a slew of such skilled and awesome people and at the same time that our time together as the big group will be limited.

My interview with our sector leader makes me believe that I will be placed in a smaller village to do my actual Peace Corps service. This was further confirmed by the fact that I will be focusing my language studies on Bambara for most of our pre-service training (PST). (Side note: I received an "Intermediate-mid" rating after my French test-- not quite sure how, but I think that I can make stuff up, even in French!!) Half-way through PST I'll also receive a lot of French lessons to insure that I will be able to speak when necessary.

I've had no trouble whatsoever sleeping in the heat-- it's actually quite comforting. Each night has been approximately 80ish degrees farenheit, plus humidity. We have a fan in our room that we have been using, and we sleep with the door open and a screen door shut. Maybe I'm just so exhausted from the long days or maybe this is good weather for me! Either way, I should be sleeping well for a while until the rainy season ends and the mini-hot season begins in Octoberish. Then, supposedly, most volunteers end up sleeping outside. I can't wait.

Animals seen so far include: awesome bugs and birds, lizards and salamanders, and more bugs. The training center is next to the Niger (the gorgeous river that flows through Mali). I might find some hippos soon :-)

I won't be able to write for a while as I get settled into my homestay, but know that I'm thinking of AW (ya'll in Bambara). Next time I'll come back with tons of new phrases to share with you-- my homestay family won't speak English and few will speak French.

We've learned the basics and tomorrow will be headed to our homestay villages to make ALL of the cultural mistakes possible. At least I'll be good at that.

Beautiful

Exactly one week from now I'll be on a plane making its way across the Atlantic Ocean that will separate me (geographically) from the country that I call my home. Hopefully my time in Mali will allow me to call another country my home, at least temporarily.

Feelings. Right now.
Okay. I'm nervous mostly because I really don't speak French yet. I know they say that immersion is the best way to learn, and I'm super excited to be immersed, but I've never done anything quite like this before. Spanish immersion camp didn't count-- we'd always cheat by speaking to our bunkmates completely in English. But this time I won't have English speaking bunkmates. For the first three (or so) months, I will live with a homestay family outside the city in a community that will host up to 15 other Peace Corps Volunteers. This is where I will put in to practice all of what I will learn at training. I hope that I'll have homestay siblings about my age who will demonstrate the dos and don'ts so I do shower twice daily and I don't smell a banana again (for those of you who missed out on my Uganda messages, smelling food is impolite in Uganda, but guess what I did even after I had learned this...)

The north country has been so gorgeous lately, I almost wish that I could stay a little longer to enjoy the tranquility that accompanies being in the middle of no where. As much as I despise north country winters and a general lack of action/motivation, the winds off the St. Lawrence immediately temper my mood and make me wonder why I chose to move away from this beautiful place. I'm excited, though, to add a new definition of "gorgeous" to my vocabulary as I make my way through the Sahel.