Merry Christmas

This morning as I was biking to Koutiala with Merv, I had what Merv said she thought was a thought specific to Mali and a limited range of other places: "I wish I hadn't eaten that sheep brain for breakfast." I didn't know that's what it was when I ate it, and I suppose in the grand scheme of things eating sheep brain is no big deal, but still. Sometimes here in Mali I can't help myself from taking a step back and scratching my head over the general state of my life.

So. Sheep brains. This singular event followed three days of feating and general festivity for Tabaski, the Islamic holiday that comes two months after Ramadan. On the day of Tabaski (or Seliba, in Bambara), each family is supposed to slaughter a sheep, I gather in tribute to the Biblical story of Abraham, who was asked to slaughter his child but God intervened at the last moment and had him slaughter a sheep instead. Slaughter a sheep we did (see pictures below). My host father, Drissa, cut its throat, and my host brother Moussa along with Sinali, Massa, and Amadou, skinned it. We then spent most of the morning eating large amounts of meat and playing with some of the gifts I had given the children (thanks to my mother, who sent them from Ameriki).

The day of Seliba itself and the two days after, I went around and visited some of the neighborhood people- Seliba afternoon at my Bambara tutor Safiyatou's compound, and then over to my homologue Dao's place, and the day after I made it to the house of Jean Bosco Berthe, a retired technician from the agricultural research center down the road who I hadn't talked to much yet (he gave me a chicken), and also to the house of Korotimi, the wife of the director of IRCT, who is friends with my host family. That one was interesting, since I went with Jelika by donkey cart, which I had never done before. Friday I also made a trip to N'Tarla, a village about 7 km away from Ferme, to meet with the dugitigi (chief) there and discuss the possibility of working with their community. In the next few weeks I'll be going around with Dao to five other village to meet with other dugutigis. This one, with Souleymane Malle, went pretty well (and I scored a hunk of sheep meat off that meeting!).

Yesterday I went to M'Pessoba and hung out with the other volunteers for a while then went back home to hang out with Adiaratou for a while. Which brings me to now. Just got into Koutiala. It was a hard bike ride because my stomach wasn't liking the sheep's brain too much and in general I think feasting for the past few weeks hasn't put me in the best shape for a 25 mile bike ride. But I survived, and I think my digestive system has as well.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Some Pages From My Journal

Monday, December 3, 2007

I think today was a pretty good day, as was yesterday, now that I think of it. Yesterday in particular- all the sweeter because it started out kind of so-so. Yesterday being Sunday, I rode my bike to market to get there around 10, as usual. I knew Amanda and Merv had gone to Sikasso, so I wasn't expecting them to be there, but I thought Greg would be, and I was looking forward a bit to speaking some English. However, when I arrived at Boua's boutigi, he informed me that Greg had left to go to Sikasso on Saturday evening. I was a bit disappointed, because it meant I wasn't going to have my usual English-speaking day, but I went into the market and bought food to give to Jelika. I was supposed to meet Adiartou, the matrone of the maternity, at the boutigi at 11 anyways, because we were going to buy materials to do embroidery. I was at her house on Monday or Tuesday of last week and she had showed me some of the stuff she had done and told me she could teach me.

After taking my usual turn around the market, I headed back to the boutigi and found Adiaratou there almost right away. We walked through the market to a store at the back that I'd never seen before and bought the goods. Then Adiaratou asked what I was doing next and I said I wasn't sure, so she asked in a sort of offhand way if I wanted to go to her house. I said yes, so we treked over there, stopping along the way to meet her husband Ousmane, a big, friendly teddy-bear type guy who informed me that he speaks English "small small." At her house, I met Ousmane's first wife, Barakissa. We all sat around talking for just a little while, and then Adiaratou and I went over to visit a friend of hers who had just had a child on Thursday, then back to her house to meet her other friend, Batama, who had also recently had a child,and to eat lunch. After lunch, she taught me some embroidery and we sat around a bit before heading over to a woman who braids hair. She did Adiaratou's hair then took on mine. So I've been kuntigi-ed (braided) once more. Got a range of reactions from people- usually some mixture of laughter and "Anyana!" ("Good!"). Drissa said my mother wouldn't recognize me if she saw me now.

After the braiding, Adiaratou and I parted ways. On my way back to take a turn around the market, I went past Bintou's mother's restaurant and predictably ran into Bintou (one of my co-workers at the maternity). Since I was alone and it had been a while since I saw Bintou, I stopped and chatted with her for a while. I found out that she's married and has a four year old daughter. Maybe it's silly, but when she introduced her daughter (Ami) as her daughter, I thought she was joking- because she had just told me that she herself was only twenty years old. And because she's always struck me as a less conventional/more liberal Malian, one who didn't prescribe to the usual get married and have ten children thing that seems to be the norm here. And because Bintou jokes around a lot. But no, apparently she had a child when she was 16.

When I got back to Ferme, I went to the garden and planted some onions that Jelika had procured at the market. I'm really beginning to enjoy working in the garden, because people are helping me out more recently, and the garden is expanding, and most importantly, things aren't dying. I was kind of unsure about the tomatoes there for a while, but they seem to have pulled through after their transplanting from the nursery.

Today was also pretty good- went to the garden in the morning to prepare a bed, then stopped by the infirmery to say hi to Bintou. We chatted a little, then I headed home to eat lunch before going over to Safiyatou's to meet her before going to the muso baro (a little women's tea party). The muso baro was okay- there was tea and peanuts as usual. However, I didn't talk much, and I ended up making a faux pas by asking one of the women her name when we had been introduced multiple (many) times before. Oops. And then the women spent a lot of time arguing over money issues, which seems to be a common occurrence.

Because they spent so much time arguing, it was almost 6 by the time I made it to the garden. I had told Ba Kante and Mama that I was going to give them some tomato plants from my nursery. When I got there, Ba Kante had gone home and then had pulled up the remaining plants from my nursery, which I was a bit put-out by, since Jelika had wanted to take some more to put in her garden, and in general that was a lot of tomato plants. But I decided to not make a big fuss over it since I have some new plants that have sprouted, and now they won't bug me for more plants.

This evening the kids came over and we were going to study, but ended up having a little mathematics contest instead. Amadou won, I'm not sure if because of how easy I made his test compared to the others or because he actually knows his stuff best. Anways, I'm thinking about what I can to to study with them.

So a busy couple of days, and I'm anticipating a few more busy days as well. I am feeling like I'm beginning to make some real friends here, which is nice. Still plotting my next escape to Koutiala, but oh well . . .

She writes from Koutiala.. .

Thanksgiving

This is going to be a quick update, because I have limited time here at the internet cafe, and, well, I'm lazy.

I'm currently sitting in Koutiala, having returned from three days and three nights spent hanging out with other volunteers in Sikasso ville for Thanksgiving. I've been traveling all week. On Tuesday all of the Koutiala area volunteers met in Koutiala to spend the night making hamburgers and hanging around with Sadio, our local Bambara tutor/Malian buddy, and his roommate Dolo. The next day, we headed to Sikasso, where we spent Wednesday making more than ten apple and pumpkin pies for the sixty or so people who came into the city from around the country. Thanksgiving day itself I spent hanging out with people and eating copious amounts of food. Sounds a lot like an American Thanksgiving, huh? Yesterday was Mexican night. All the volunteers went over to Katie's house and ate a meal of tacos on the roof of her apartment building. Nice.

Hm, sorry for the somewhat mechanical sounding update. Things are generally going pretty well at site, though I've been gone a fair amount in the past week or so. Came up here last week for Bambara tutoring, and now have been gone since Tuesday for Thanksgiving festivities. However, I feel like I'm settling in a bit more, getting to know more people and so on. I had all the ladies from the women's organization over to my house for tea two Mondays ago- was pretty successful. Have some photos of it that I'm working on getting up online. They will be available here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018089&l=aedc2&id=10301328

soon.

In other news, the new Hunger Report, which I was working on last year at Bread for the World, is up online. Check it out here:

http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-reports/hunger-report-2008-download.html

I wrote the initial draft for Chapter 3, and there's an artical I wrote on a Milwaukee-area NGO in there as well.

That's it for now! Will write again later.

It's been a while

Since I wrote in this blog. I've now been at site almost four weeks, which seems like a long time and not much time at all all at once.

Hm, not sure how to begin this. The first few weeks at site were pretty tough, mostly because they felt kind of lonely. Not that I hadn't anticipated those feelings, but the anticipation of them is a bit different than the experience. Actually, now that I think about it, the anticipation of everything to do with the Peace Corps has been different than how it has actually felt to be here doing this. I suppose it's the same with everything a person does, but I think that feeling is especially acute with this experience, since I really had no idea what Mali was going to be like. Six months ago I don't think I could have even found the country on a map (though I might have gotten close) and now I'm living here.

In any case, the fist couple of weeks at site were tough because I was feeling kind of alone. There are people all around, and most of them are friendly people, but with language and cultural barriers as there are, it is possible to feel completely alone in the midst of a crowd of people. My days so far are pretty varied as to how much I get done (if anything) and what I'm doing. Wednesday and Friday mornings, I go to work at the local maternity, which is three buildings down from my house. Wednesdays are baby-weighings/vaccinations, Fridays we weigh pregnant women and vaccinate them against tetnus. Mostly what I do so far is help record these figures- I'm not allowed to stick anyone with a needle according to Peace Corps, so there will be no playing doctor for me.

There is a small host of people who work at the maternity with me, some of whom seem to come and go on there own schedules. But in general, the group includes Awa, Mariam, Abdu, Bintou, and another woman who has started coming since this last friday with her young daughter in tow (who, incidentally, has developed some irrational fear of toubabs and wouldn't stop crying this morning every time she saw me). If I could use one word to describe this group of people it would be . . . smart-allecky. Okay, maybe that's two words, but in any case it works. Everyone is very jovial and likes to make fun of one another. I expecially like Bintou, I think because she is my age or a couple of years younger and seems to have quite a strong character. I feel like she would be a good person to have back you up in a fight. It makes me happy, too, to find a woman my age-ish who hasn't gotten married yet and seems to maybe have some ambitions. The downside to everyone's joking nature at the maternity, though, is that often I don't get the jokes (limited language . . .) and have to smile and nod a lot.

When I'm not working at the maternity (most of the time), I can be found sitting at my house reading a book, working in the garden, or over at my Bambara tutor's house attempting to understand what she is saying to me. The Bambara is progressing comparatively slowly since I moved to Ferme. Without the structured 7-8 hours of class time each day, my motivation to learn things kind of wanes. Not to say that I haven't been giving it some work- I've been drafting a translation of Cinderella in Bambara for the past few weeks and reading each new section to my Bambara tutor. Have also been working on learning vocabulary from our Agricultural Bambara handbook, which comes in useful in terms of talking about activities in the garden.

Evenings, I spend with my host family, sometimes talking, sometimes studying, sometimes watching TV. Lately the three younger kids, Sinali, Amadou and Na, have been coming over to my house to work on their lessons from school. I'm pretty sure they come over mostly because there is a lightbulb and a blackboard in one of the rooms of my house, but since there there I feel obliged to try to help them out. These efforts range from somewhat fruitful to laughable, depending on how suitable my language skills are to whatever they're studying and how much I can read out of their notes (not always a lot, especially with Na). I usually have the most luck studying with Sinali, since he's a bit older, knows a bit more French, and takes better notes. Lately Moussa has been coming over to help his younger siblings, but I'm not a fan of his methods, which involve hitting them upside the head when they don't know an answer after having left them to stare at a math problem that they don't understand while he hangs out with his friends outside for fifteen minutes. Hm, does that sound bitter? Anyway, we had a bit of a discussion on the topic of corporal punishment in the school setting yesterday, but I'm not sure what will come of that.

In the garden, I've been doing what I can do, which is not very much. I always thought it was a bit of a crazy idea to come to Africa and work as an "Agricultural Extension Agent" when I've barely farmed a day in my life, and now I'm encountering some of the challenges of this proposition. My first attempt was to grow some seeds in my backyard that I had brought from the US- Mesculan seeds. I made myself a nice little bed, mixed in some fertilizer, planted the seeds and watched as they sprouted and were promptly eaten by the frogs and chickens that apparently find my backyard a pretty happening place. 'Twas fairly depressing, but I guess you figure out ways to deal with these things as time goes on. Right now I'm trying again in the women's garden. Just spent a few days getting a rather large bed prepared, in which I want to plant a couple of different kinds of seeds (tomatoes, lettuce, onion, broccoli) and see what pests that like to eat the fruits of my labor inhabit this new territory.

So anyway, that's pretty much how things have been going so far. Right now I'm in Koutiala again at the mission, using their internet. Shall try to update again in a few weeks.

So I know I said I wouldn't have internet anymore . . .

But apparently access is available here at the missionary in Koutiala, at least if you have a computer, which I do via fellow PCV Amanda. Thought I'd take advantage to post some pictures.


Bess on the rope at Tubaniso.


On the way to swear-in.


Roomies Lindsey and Stephanie at the embassy.


Jared gives his Tamasheq speech.


Sinsina kow.


"Swearing in."


Sikasso kow.


Dinner in Sikasso.


Blurry volunteers in the kitchen: Michele and Trinh.

Sikasso

Right now, I'm hanging out at an internet café in Sikasso ville. I arrived here yesterday in the company of eight other volunteers. Tomorrow I'll be going to Koutiala with fellow volunteers Ben and Amanda, where we'll hang out for a day or to to buy stuff for our houses before being installed on Thursday. I'm looking forward to installation, since it means the beginning of my actual service and the end of being shepherded around by the PC. On the other hand, it might end up being a bit anti climatic, after the past week or so.

I've pretty much been hanging out with other PCVs since swear-in on Friday. Friday evening, we had a party at the Pirates club, which went on until the wee hours of the morning. It was really a lot of fun; I haven't really had a chance to let loose since I got to Mali, and spending the night dancing was just what I needed. The day after, we entertained ourselves by swimming in the hotel pool (we spent the night in Bamako in a hotel) and eating as much 'toubab' food as possible (lots of ice cream, chocolate, and burgers- my vegetarianism seems to have gone down the tube for now).

Yesterday morning we left for Sikasso around 6 am, arriving just around 2 in the afternoon. We met up with some of the resident volunteers, Trinh, Michelle, and Jack, and spent the evening walking around, eating, and watching a few movies. Sikasso is the second largest city in Mali, followed by Segou, and then Koutiala. Although I'm not sure how often I'll be coming here, since Segou and Koutiala are both significantly closer, it is nice to have gotten the lay of the land and to have met some more Sikasso volunteers.

Anyway, think that's all I'll write for now. Wish me luck with installation. I'll hopefully be able to update again in a few weeks.

This evening I watched Singing in the Rain in the refectoire with Emily (a current PCV) and some of my fellow trainees. I used to watch Singing in the Rain my freshman year of college whenever I was feeling homesick. Somehow, seeing Gene Kelly do his rain dance inspires a certain kind of joy in me. Seeing him lose himself to childish leaps and twirls and stomps is a little like losing the part of myself that is so grounded in my worries and fears.

Some of my homesickness has faded in the past week or so. The first few days back at Sinsina were hard again, but sometime in the middle of the week, my bad mood broke and somewhere in there I reached a tentative inner peace about being here, resolving to think about what is at hand instead of how long I've committed to being here or what else I could be doing.

There's a lot going on right now. On Sunday morning I said goodbye to my family in Sinsina. It was the end of a series of goodbyes, first on Wednesday when we had a party with the villagers. The party was attended by a lot of children, and some of the adults who were associated with our families. At the party, we presented some gifts to our families and Bocar, the language coordiator at Tubani So, came by to help with this and to give our families certificates of thanks for hosting us. Afterwards, we had a dance party. My "little girls," as I think of them- my host sisters Nayima, Batama, Ajara, Konimba, and our two neighbor Fatimis- were all very excited about dancing, as was Jeneba. They were especially excited to see me dance, and informed me afterward that I knew how to dance kosebe kosebe (very well).

Friday I took my language test, passing with a score of Intermediate Mid. Saturday, I said goodbye to my host father, Sine Doumbia, since he had to go to Bamako to work for a few days. I gave him a few small gifts- a pack of cards and a drawing book for the kids as well as a snow globe I had bought in the Milwaukee airport before leaving. Satuday evening was pretty low-key, but in a really nice way. After dinner I made tea for the family, which was exciting, since I've watched Malians make tea many times now but haven't gotten a chance to do it myself. Making tea in Mali is something of an art, involving pouring tea from the pot to the cup and back to the pot many times, reheating the tea in-between to mix the tea and the sugar in just the right quantities. The result is a very sweet green tea that is served in small glasses.

Sunday morning goodbyes flew by quickly. I woke up in the morning to my usual routine, going to Kajatu's kitchen hut to get hot water for my bath, eating my bread and peanut butter with tea for breakfast, and cleaning up my room a bit before taking a number of pictures and heading to the school to catch the Peace Corps vehicle back to Tubani So.

At the moment, I'm back at Tubani So, eating copious amounts of chocolate, doing some last-minute training on everything from sex education to chicken raising and waiting for our swear-in ceremony on Friday. We've had a bit more time off lately. Monday afternoon, there was nothing to do so I went off with Jared and Bess, two of the other trainees (soon to be volunteers) on a bike ride to some cliffs that aren't too far from Tubani So. We climbed up to the top to take some pictures and enjoy the view. Speaking of pictures, I put some more up online. You can check them out at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016383&l=be921&id=10301328.

Homesickness

They continued across the desert. With every day that passed, the boy's heart became more and more silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to contemplate the desert, to drink with the boy from the soul of the world. The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable of betraying the other.

When his heart spoke to him, it was to provide a stimulus to the boy, and to give him strength, because the days of silence there in the desert were wearisome. His heart told the boy what his strongest qualities were: his courage in having given up his sheep and trying to live out his Personal Legend, and his enthusiasm during the time he had worked in the crystal shop.

I wrote this quotation from The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho in my journal a couple of weeks ago. My fellow PCT, Rachel, had lent it to me, and it seemed very topical for what I was experiencing. Ever since I got here, my emotional state has been majorly fluctuating. There's been so much stuff to take in- new language, new food, endless training sessions, all new people, etc. A lot of this stuff has been good, but it has also been quite a shock- l'expérience m'a boulversée. The first week or so in Sinsina was really hard because this shock sort of took over, and all I could think about most of the time was how cool the weather was at home or some such thing. Since then, things have been up or down- one moment I'll be giddy and excited, the next moment planning my escape.

This past week in Sinsina, I was feeling pretty negative most of the time. There was a lot of good stuff about the week- I hung out with my host family a fair amount, reread a good book, worked (kind of) on my Bambara. But at the same time, I couldn't help myself from conjuring up images of my life as it might be right now if I were at home.

Hm, I'm not sure exactly how to articulate this, but whenever I read that quote from the Alchemist in my journal, I feel like someone out there must understand how I'm feeling about being in Mali- it's like this basic conflict between knowing what I want for myself in my life right now and what will make me happier and more self-actualized in the long run and wanting at the same time the safety, security, and familiarity of home.

On the one hand, I've basically gotten everything I wanted in being here. Already, this experience has been unlike any other experience I've ever had and I can only think that completing two years of service will continue to expand my understanding of some issues I feel are really important to me (understanding and respecting other cultures, learning about poverty, working with nutrition issues).

This morning the agricultural volunteers took a trip to the International Crop Research Insitute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which conveniently has a center right next door to Tubaniso. We got a tour and some explanation of what the center works on as well as a similar presentation of two other organizations, ICRAFT and the Asian Vegetable and Somethingoranother Research Center, that are situated on the grounds. Er, sorry I can't remember the names of the last two there, but at any rate . . . The first part of the tour was with the people from ICRAFT, which is a research institute that does stuff with agroforestry. We learned about tree grafting, which is really cool and seems like a great way of getting fruitful trees to communities faster. By grafting the branch of a tree that's already making fruit onto a younger tree, you can greatly decrease the amount of time before that tree begins flowering- for example, they showed us a baobab tree (sira in Bambara)- which normally takes 18 years of growing before it begins to produce fruit- if grafted, it only takes 5-10 years (may have these figures mixed up a bit, but you get the basic idea). In the case of the baobab, what's also cool is that a grafted tree is much shorter than a regularly-grown tree, which is good because it means villagers can more easily reach the fruit and there's less chance of accidents.

We also got a chance to talk to the people at ICRISAT. They told us a bit about some of the varieties of crops they are experimenting with- a variety of peanut that is resistent to two particular illnesses, a couple of varieties of sorghum, etc. There was also a woman who works on nutritional issues who was telling us about how she was working on developing new ways of food processing that would help fight anemia and other nutritional deficiencies in children. The Asiain Vegetable people showed us around their garden, pointing out some varieties of leafy vegetable that they were trying to encourage comsumption of for nutritional reasons, and over to their tomato crops- apparently there's a particular virus that attacks tomato plants in Mali- they were experimenting with different varieties of tomatos to see if any of them would be resistant to the virus (none of them seemed to be as far as I could tell).

Anyway, it was a really interesting morning, and I found myself feeling more enthusiasm for this undertaking than I've felt for a week anyway. There's so much to learn here, so much I could do, but it all seems so daunting, and being away from everything familiar makes it seemt that much more difficult. It's easy to be positive right now, somehow, at Tubaniso, but, well, I don't know. I hope it gets better.

Send me letters, anyway, and M&Ms.

M'Pessoba Ferme

I returned to Bamako yesterday from a five-day visit to the site where I will spend the next two years of my service, M'Pessoba Ferme, or Feremuna. It was an interesting five days, full of meetings, exploration, and a bit of welcome relaxation.

My journey began last Wednesday, when I set off from Tubaniso with my homologue (the person in my community who will help me figure out projects to work on and connect to people in the community), Soulemane Dao, at 5:30 in the morning. The day before, Dao had arrived to participate in the "homologue workshop" where everyone's homologues came to learn about the mission of the Peace Corps and what would be expected of them as homologues. This was business as usual for Dao, who has been acting as a homologue for the past five years. There were two volunteers in my village before me, Jenn (Jeneba) and Michelle (Aissita), and he had also had the opportunity to work with volunteers in another village before this. Luckily, he speaks very good French, so when my broken Bambara isn't good enough (frequently), he can clarify in French.

The journey on Wednesday to Feremuna was fairly uneventful. I boarded a bus with Dao and another volunteer, Amanda Jackson, and her homologue, which took us straight to M'Pessoba (where Amanda is stationed) and then to Feremuna, 5-6 km down the road. Feremuna is the home of the Centre d'Apprentissage Agricole, a three-year agricultural school where Dao works as a veteranarain and a professor. The school, and a large part of the village, is located along a wide dirt road lined with mangoe trees that is immediately off the main paved road from M'Pessoba. My house is at the end of this road, a three-room house with a small yard and a private nyegan.

When we arrived, there was a group of women from the women's cooperative waiting to greet me. Unfortunately, I didn't spend as much time talking with them as I would have liked to in retrospect, but we exchanged greetings and names and talked for a few minutes. My host mother, Djelika, and her husband Drissa were also there, and served lunch to Dao and myself. I spent the afternoon hanging around with my host mother for a while asking questions about the women's cooperative, and then Dao arrived to take me around the village and greet many of the profesors and meet the director of the school (who is technically my supervisor, though I'm not sure how much involvement he'll have in my work).

Thursday, I found myself largely without things to do. I spent part of the morning studying Bambara and thinking of some questions to ask the women in the village about the garden (which Dao had showed me the day before). In the afternoon, I decided to go for a walk alone and see what there was to see, maybe check out the garden by myself again. As I walked towards the garden, I met a number of village inhabitants and was invited to chat for a while. Everyone was friendly, and patient with my elementary Bambara skills. When I arrived in the garden, I ran into Kassoum, Dao's oldest son, who went around the garden with me and told me the names of all the crops being grown. The garden looked pretty well established.

I'm still trying to figure out precisely what my role will be in the community. The previous volunteers helped out in the garden, helped the women's cooperative with cloth dying and soap making, and also helped out at the local maternity and a maternity in a neighboring town weighing children and giving vaccinations (though not the actual needle sticking part). There seems to be an endless number of things I could get involved with.

The next couple of days I spent meeting up with local volunteers Merv and Greg and with Amanda as well. On Saturday we took a trip to Koutiala, a city about 45 minutes-1 hour down the road that has about 100,000 inhabitants. I have a feeling I'll be going down there once every two weeks or so; we have a house rented out in a coupound downtown that we can spend the night in and there is a rather large market and a restaurant or two. We hung out Saturday night and returned to the M'Pessoba area around 1 pm the next day.

Now I'm back at Tubaniso, anticipating going back to Sinsina on Thursday. Most recent news: got one of the other volunteers to cut my hair for me and it is now back to the length it was when I was in Paris, a few inches above my shoulders. It feels good- lighter, and I'm sure it will be much easier to take care of. That's it for now, folks.

Home again home again at Tubaniso . . .

Just got back to Tubaniso yesterday morning after another week and a half in Sinsina. Things are going well; I'm feeling better settled in and am enjoying haning around with my host family a bit more. I think serious thoughts of going home kind of dissipated earlier this week, and it feels better to be committed to being here. There are still so many challenges ahead that make me a bit nervous, though. In particular, the coming week will be another transition period. We are all being sent out to our sites for a couple of days to take a look at things and meet the people we'll be working with there. I've been assigned to a site in the Sikasso region called Feremuna. It's a small village of about 550 located just off the main paved road between Segou ville and Sikasso ville. There have been two volunteers there before me already, so there are a number of specific projects already in the works for me to help out with, including working with the women's organization to get a bigger well dug for their garden and helping the young men's association with a tree nursury. None of which I have any expertise in, of course, so we'll see how that goes.

This week I'm just supposed to set up my bank account, have some time to work with my local language tutor, check out my living conditions, and meet people in the village. I'm pretty nervous about all of this, since my Bambara skills are still pretty low and being alone in my village without PC staff right nearby to help out feels like a lot to handle. Plus, I'm supposed to get myself back to Bamako with public transportation. However, I will have some help with all of this. Our "homologues," the people in our village who we're supposed to work directly with are coming in to Tubaniso tonight and tomorrow night. Mine is coming tomorrow- he's a veterenarian in the village and thankfully he speaks French. He'll travel back to Feremuna with me on Wednesday.

So, a lot to anticipate coming up. The last week was all pretty good. One of the first nights I was back there was a marriage celebration in the village and I went out dancing with Jeneba. The dances during the marriage begin early in the night with the youngest members of the community. People dance in lines facing each other- often the men in one line and the women in the other, and step forward and back for most of the song. It's not until the end of the night that the bride and groom might show up and dance. In general, in Malian weddings the bride and the groom are not present for the actual marriage celebration- marriage is seen as a union of the two families more than the two individuals. I only stayed at the party until 12:30 or so, however, so I didn't get to see if the bride and groom showed up.

Hm, other highlights of the week: biked into Sanagouroba, a bigger town nearby a couple of times for some exercise, which felt good, helped the little girls get water from the pump and learned to carry water (very slowly) on my head, and finally got my host mother to let me help with a little bit of food preparation/cooking.

Anyway, think I'm gonna wind this up right now. I'm in the process of attempting to upload some photos and short videos to facebook. You can check out my progress at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015655&l=5da43&id=10301328

Sinsina

So I'm finally back within reach of internet! It feels good to have some time to catch up with things. We just returned from our homestay villages today. I've spent the last few weeks in Sinsina, a village of about 2000 people to the south of Bamako. The past week and a half has been quite an experience.

We got to Sinsina two Wenesdays ago. We were welcomed as we came into town by a line of men who shot off guns (with blanks) in our honor and a crowd of people who led us to the center of town, outside of the mosque. A group of musicians played Malian music on the balophones (a kind of African xylophone) and we were called to dance with the women of the village. Then we met with the dugutiki, the chief of the village, to offer him kola nuts. He and a number of the village elders made small speeches to welcome us and then we went outside for more dancing and to meet our hosts and be taken to our houses.

My host in Sinsina is Sine Doumbia, a technician at a television station in Bamako. My room is part of a compound where Sine lives with his wife, Kajatu, and seven children and one of his cousins and his wife. It took me quite a while to get everyone's names and associations down, as it's hard to remember unfamiliar names and people tend to come and go a lot. So far, I've hung out the most with Madan, my host brother who is a surly 19, and Jeneba, the wife of Sine's cousin, who is a very sweet and caring woman. Jeneba has five children, Cenigba, Ajara, Batama, Konimba, and Awo, ranging from 2 to 16 in age. Madan has six younger siblings, Ousmane, Drisa, Fatima, Bengay, Nanimba, and Seydou (who is a very cute 6 month old). The day that I arrived they gave me the honorary name of Alamako Doumbia, after Sine's mother who also lives in the compoud. I like my name; somehow it feels like it fits me pretty well, and I assume it will follow me throughout Mali for the next two years.

The training so far has been intense, although part of that was adjusting. Each day we have language training from 8 in the morning to 12:30, and then from 2:30 to 6 or so. I feel as if I've learned an enourmous amount of Bambara in that time, although I really have retained only a small amount so far. In the evenings, I go home and collapse. I eat lunch and dinner with Madan in my room, and for entertainment I'll play cards with the kids or go over and hang out with Jeneba. Everyone gets a ball out of hearing me speak Bambara (or try to speak Bambara) and trying to teach me to say things. The kids especially like playing the game of pointing at things and telling me the word (and watching me forget five seconds later). I learned a number of the body parts the first day through this method.

The first few days in town were pretty rough; I had a terrible bout of homesickness and really wanted to go home. It didn't help that I came down with a touch of something two days in and had some nausea and Mr. D for a day or two. I didn't feel like eating anything and they kept giving me meat (which I haven't eaten for the past year and a half). But I felt a bit better little by little and have been feeling pretty positive the past day or two, though I'm still feeling a bit bowled over by the idea of staying in Mali for the next two years.

It's good to be back in Tubaniso for a couple of days and not feel like everyone is constantly watching me and as if things I'm doing may be culturally incorrect and just to be able to understand everyone. I'm looking forward to collecting myself a bit and thinking about how to be positive and make the most out of my experience when I go back.

Arrived at Last

So I'm finally in Mali! Been here a few days now. Getting here was a bit of an ordeal. It took over 24 hours of traveling, it's hard to tell exactly how long because of all the time changes and the lack of sleep. We got to the airport in Philly around 2 pm or so on Thursday, and our plane took off around 7- didn't seem like much of a wait, though, because the lines took a while and there were a lot of people around to talk with. The flight was okay, though I didn't sleep at all really. We arrived in Paris around 8 am local time and had about 7-8 hours before our next flight. They had arranged a "day room" for us at a hotel near the airport, a pretty swanky one where they served us a nice breakfast and I watched soap operas in French with my roomie Stephanie. I had really wanted to go into Paris, but PC people strongly discouraged it and even though I almost went with some people, I figured it wouldn't really be worth it since I would just be angsty the whole time about getting back in time and I wouldn't get to see Martine, which was what I really wanted to do in town.

We left Paris around 5 pm local time and arrived in Mali about 5 hours later. The airport was crowded (especially with 81 volunteers) and it took a little while to locate my luggage, but everything was there when I got it. We all drove to Tubaniso, the training facility outside of Bamako in PC vehicles, through the dark. So far I haven't seen much of Mali outside of Tubaniso. There was a whole host of people in the traffic on the way here and by the side of the road hanging out or selling stuff, but we didn't really stop for anything. The sky was so big and full of stars when we got here, it made me feel a bit soothed. I have to say, arriving in the nighttime having not slept for over 24 hours (and having only had about 5 hours the night before due to salsa dancing) didn't really put me in a positive mood when we first arrived. I kind of wanted to get back on the plane . . .

But, here are some positive (and I'm feeling pretty positive right now) highlights of my time here so far: Learning Bambara- we've only had one class, but I'm excited to start a new language. Speaking French- it's amazing how much more confident I feel with my French now than when I was in Paris a few years ago. I was so excited to talk with the stewardesses on the plane, and now with the Malians. I had my language placement test in French today and I've been label "advanced low." The people- they're so friendly and encouraging, and eager to make us feel at home. The mangoes- oh my god you never lived til you tasted a Malian mango.

This afternoon we had a "cultural fair" where we all learned the value of bartering. There were three vendors and a tailor present. One of the vendors was selling ready-made clothes and tried to charge the volunteers about 4 times as much as the clothing was generally worth (according to a current PCV) and succeeded until we were all let in on things. Then he wouldn't take down his price and everyone went to the woman selling cloth instead to buy cloth and then have clothing made- still ended up paying a bit too much, but at least not outrageous (well, compared to the first guy). I had a panya (banya? not sure of the spelling) made- basically a wrap-around skirt- along with a top and a piece of cloth to tie around my head. It's funny, I thought it would seem like a chore to barter, but I think I'm going to enjoy it- if nothing else, it's a fun way of interacting with people. I just need to become better at it and to learn the best price for things (even if it is a toubab, or white person's, price).

I also had my hair braided at the fair- multple braids in rows. It looks really cool, though I'll probably have to take it out after a few days. It's also much cooler temperature-wise. I hadn't realized how much heat my head was retaining.

Hm, other highlights- we had lunch today and ate with our hands, with is the tradition in Mali. You're only allowed to eat with your right hand because people use their left hand when they're in the nyegan (bathroom). I don't think I've quite gotten the hang of the eating with the right hand thing- there was rice all over the place when I'm done. My Malian host family will laugh and laugh at me . . . 'twil be good fun.

We're only spending one more full day here, then it's off to our host villages for training. There are 13 host villages for 81 volunteers, so there will be 5-6 of us or so in each village. They used to send everyone to the same village, but then they figured that this wasn't the best way to help volunteers learn the language and culture and so on. There are villages with people speaking all of the languages we'll be learning (there are 5 local languages and French), and we'll be placed based on what language will be useful in the villages we end up serving in. Most of the training period host villages are around Bamako, I think the farthest is about 2-3 hour drive from Tubaniso.

I'm looking forward to moving to the host village on Wednesday, but I think it will be a whole new thing from what it is here. Here we have electricity, computers, and a staff of Malians who speak English and French and are used to us weird toubabs. I'm still excited, though. Hope things turn out well.

Leaving!

Hi all,

Quick update (very quick). I'm leaving for Philly today (right now!) to begin staging tomorrow. Will be hanging out with my friends Molly from Bryn Mawr and Alissa from FGC in Philly tonight and then staging begins tomorrow. I assume I'll have some sort of access to my email while I'm there and during training, but if anyone wants to reach me via snail mail, my address will be:

Meg Munroe
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 85 Bamako
Mali

Thanks!

FGC Gathering

This morning, I watched the sun rise over a field in River Falls, WI. It was the end of a week spent at the Gathering put on each year by Friends General Conference, the central governing organization of unprogrammed Quakers. It was the end of a lovely week.
It was also the end of a busy week. I arrived at the campus last Saturday after a seven hour drive with a Friend from Milwaukee Meeting and his daughter. I had connected up with him when I attended Milwaukee Meeting in April. The ride was fairly uneventful, as was my arrival on campus. I registered and moved into the Adult Young Friends dorm, where I discovered that my roommate was a student at Haverford, a happy coincidence. I spent each day this week going to a workshop that I had signed up for on spirituality and activism in the morning and hanging out with Adult Young Friends (Quakers roughly 18-35 in age) in the program in the afternoon and the evening. The theme of this year's Gathering was "And Who is Thy Neighbor?" (or something along those lines), focusing on what we can do to better understand and live in a community with those around us. There were a number of plenaries, presentations by Friends of different backgrounds relating to the theme. The one I found most powerful, I think, was a presentation by two members of the AYF community, one a transgendered young man and the other a woman who lives on a Catholic Workers organic farm. Both of them spoke about their experiences working to reach out to those around them.

I also got the chance to attend a number of other workshops and worship opportunities, including an interest group on chanting on Tuesday and a couple of things focusing on sexuality. Overall, though, I think what made the week great was getting to know those around me. Eveyone was very open and for the most part pretty approachable, and a pleasure to share worship with. I feel like I left the conference with a lot to think about.

Not much time to think about in it, though. I'm leaving for Seattle tomorrow with my parents to go visit my brother and go backpacking with him and my father. We'll also spend a few nights at Quinault Lodge, a lodge on a beautiful lake in the Olympic Penninsula area of Washington that we spent a night at last summer. I really think I'm needing some alone time right now, some time to reflect, but I'm not sure I'll get it. I'm leaving for Philly three days after I get back from Seattle. This is an odd concept to me at the moment, having just come from Gathering. The week seemed to stretch out forever and at times it seemed as if I had never been anywhere else. I think I'm really going to miss having a Meeting in Mali; I'm not sure if any other community of faith could really take its place for me, though I guess it could be good to explore.

Anyway, I'm also friggin tired. I haven't had any sleep since Friday at 9 am. We all stayed up last night to watch that sunrise. I guess I'll write one more update before I go. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Malimalimalimali

Okay, so I had to start this post with this picture. I think it's my favorite out of the batch I took with Shannon and our dear man-friend here. Yes, I am picking his nose; we have a very special bond. We met in Knoxville after the Squirrel Nut Zippers concert that I went to with Shan on Sunday evening, and from there it was all history. I think he's planning to come visit me in Mali.

Speaking of Mali; I'm so excited/impatient for it now. I'm glad this feeling came two and a half weeks ahead of time and not two months ago. I think I would have gone insane. The good news is I'll be super busy for the next two weeks. Going up to FGC on Saturday for a week to chill with the Quakers for a week and then it's off to Washington State with the family to visit my brother and go backpacking again. Went backpacking with Shannon last week (before the momentus meeting with Mr. Right). It was a good trip. We had three days on the trail, the second being the most challenging as it involved four miles or so of straight up the mountain (plus three miles of easier terrain). Another highlight: squirrels (or some small rodent) ate through Shannon's small backpack that we had suspended high up away from the bears (including its zipper) then through a plastic container with to get to the trail mix within the first night; the second night they vandalized my sleeping back stuff sack and ate an entire payday candy bar and a half, half a granola bar, and nibbled on some bread. But in general a good trip.

Anyhoo, so preparations for Mali: mostly been buying a bunch of stuff, putting all the music I can on my ipod, trying to work a bit on language. To tell the truth, I haven't really done much with the language stuff. I have a whole textbook on Bambara that has recordings along with it and a set of lessons the PC gave us; I've gotten through the intro and the first chapter or so of the text and the first 4 PC lessons. I think I officially know how to say, morning, noon and night now (sogoma, wula, su) and I have some basic ideas of how greetings go and I've listened to the alphabet numerous times. Most of this I learned on the plane to and from TN and back when I first got the resources a month or two ago. This reminds me a bit of how we used to give drafts of the Hunger Report to Jim (vp of policy at Bread) to read on planes because any other time he wasn't likely to be able to sit down and give it the attention it needed. Maybe if I was trapped on a plane for the next two weeks. Hmm, well enough of that; I'll take a closer look in my free time next week.

Not much else to report. I'm listening to a CD I bought yesterday of two Malian musicians, Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. This is my first listen, but I recognize some of the music from one of the African compilation CDs I have. It's good. Okeedokee, I'm running out of stuff to say. Good night!

Mali via Philadelphia!

Hello out there in blog land! It's time for another posting, because exciting things are happening. The biggest of them (or at least the one most at hand) is the fact that I got my "staging kit" in the mail today from the Peace Corps. Staging is the period of time right before we leave for Mali- a 2-3 day orientation thing where all of us (those of us going to Mali in July) will meet and be oriented. The big mystery (for me anyway) as far as staging was where it was going to be, since they don't tell you that till a month or so ahead of time. The answer: Philadelphia! I'm kind of excited about that since Bryn Mawr was right outside the city - hopefully I'll be able to set up a visit with my friend Molly, who lives in the area, before staging.

Lots of other stuff going on lately as well. I returned home to Milwaukee from DC last Friday evening (after a two-day drive which included being stuck in Chicago rush hour traffic for a few hours). Didn't stick around here for long, however. I had a bike-trip planned with my friend Carrie. The idea was to bike out of Milwaukee on Friday and spend two nights camping out. That plan kind of fell apart, however, because we neglected to plan anything and I ended up getting in to Milwaukee a bit later on Friday than planned.

So we decided to camp out of the car and bring the bikes along and go on a shorter trip on Saturday and a longer trip on Sunday. We decided to go to Point Beach State Park, right on Lake Michigan, where there was a trail that went through the forest and then along the lake. Unfortunately, almost all of the campsites had been reserved, but we took a chance and managed to snag the last tent site when we got there (after geting a warning for speeding 8 miles over the limit by an overly zealous park ranger).

The bike ride was really through some beautiful scenery; ended up going about 15 miles round trip, making it through the forest and part of the trail on the water before it was getting dark. After we returned to the campsite, we ditched the food we had brought for dinner and went to the "best sub place" in Two Rivers, WI, where we had some really good pizza and garlic bread (opted out on the subs). It rained during the night, but we still managed to make a campfire. In the morning, we had breakfast on the beach, then headed home because Carrie's foot was cut up from stepping on some glass the day before and she thought more riding would hurt. On the way home, we made a random detour to a strawberry farm and picked some strawberries to bring home.

Other than that, I've been getting pretty excited for all of the trips I have planned coming up and for Mali. I just bought a backpack to use on my trip with my friend Shannon; I'm leaving tomorrow for Tennessee, and we're going to spend three days hiking through the Smokey Mountains. Yay!

I've been feeling more and more excited for Mali lately, and happier with my decision. It's been nice to be home and have some downtime. My father bought me a book, Dancing Skeletons, by a woman named Katherine Dettwyler, who is a nutritional anthropologist at Texas A&M University. It was a study on Malian culture, with a special emphasis on hunger and malnutrition in the country. Oddly enough, reading it made me think that I might possibly go back to school for anthropology. I really love reading ethnography, and this was a particularly fast read, in the narrative style.

One thing that struck me about the book was how hunger and childhood mortality are just a fact of life for Malians. In one of the last chapters, the author contrasted her experience of having her daughter (who she had with her in country) come down with a serious bout of malaria and surviving with all the interviews she had with Malian mothers where she had them detail the children they had had and who had died and who had lived. Of course, many of the women had had more than ten children in their lives, losing more than half before they grew to become adults. How can a person deal with that kind of loss on such a regular basis? The author's research assistant explains to her that if you grow up losing siblings, experiencing death on a regular basis, you don't necessarily become numb to it but you learn to accept it as a fact of life. In some places, it's not considered appropriate to express too much grief over the death of a child, because it happens so often and because the belief is that Allah has chosen to take the child.

I'm not sure how to process this information quite yet. I spent all of last year working at an anti-hunger organization. I entered in hundreds of numbers detailing child mortality rates and hunger/malnutrition rates in developing countries, and it's not that I didn't know what they mean and it's not even that reading this book has shed some new light on the subject. Hunger and poverty just seem like such vast problems, and while I've been learning a lot more about these issues in the past few years and doing some work that has hopefully helped make people more aware of them, sometimes they just seem to big to even tackle. Is "development" the answer to the problems of people in developing countries? I've been saying to myself for the past year or so that I don't want to get involved in development as a career path, because it seems like uncertain moral territory. The concept of going into someone else's country and solving their problems for them with our Yankee know-how seems to me like another excuse to foster the idea of Western supremecy. And a good way for the US to continue our dismal track record of interfering in other countries' affairs and fucking things up. But on the other hand, we do have money over here, we do have technology. We have the means to change all of these sad statistics, so in a way we're morally obligated to do something about poverty abroad. It would just be nice if we knew what the solution was.

Just got back from the Young Adult Friends retreat in West Virginia this afternoon. I was feeling kind of unenthusiastic before I left, because helping to get things ready for it was sort of a pain. I didn't actually end up doing that much aside from helping Rosie go shopping and going to a committee meeting, but whenever I'm involved in planning anything, I tend to overthink it and spend a lot of time worrying about it.

But in any case, the retreat turned out to be a ton of fun. We went to this Quaker retreat house in West Virginia on Friday evening and got back this morning. The drive up was a bit stressful because Rosie was worried about the directions and the last bit involved driving through some dark, narrow, rocky roads. When we got there, things began to perk up. There were a couple of people waiting and a "tree-house" structure for us to sleep in. It wasn't actually in a tree, but it was this large wooden structure that was stood on stilts on the side of a hill- no walls, but an obliging roof above. We laid out our sleeping bags on the floor and cooked up some mac and cheese as others arrived. Two of the new arrivals, Basil and Conamore, brought their dog Camilla, who was a great addition to the party.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get any sleep on Friday evening (and had gotten about four hours the night before) due to a bout of insomnia and the nighttime soundtrack featuring a couple of birds, a little snoring, and Camilla's occasional barking. So I was pretty tired when I woke up, but everyone was in a good mood in the morning. We had breakfast then a bit of worship-sharing for about an hour or so on the subject of simplicity. In the late afternoon/morning, we set off on a hike through the woods. It was mostly uphill for a while, which was definitely a work out for me, but it felt good, and hiking is really a good way to get to know people. The vibe reminded me a bit of the APA group when I was in Paris and we'd take side trips together- everyone's very genial and it's a great opportunity to have little chats with people. Plus some of the scenery was great. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch on a cliff face overlooking a bunch of rolling hills.

After we got back to the treehouse, everyone collapsed for about an hour and slept, then began to revive. I made chili for dinner with the help of Andrew, Barrie, and Calley. It turned out pretty well, and despite my worries that there would be too much, it was all gone just like that. After dinner, we all hung around in the tree house and then went down to the fire and made s'mores and sat around talking for a while. Some people stayed by the fire for a while longer singning, but I was tired and collapsed into slumber in the treehouse.

This morning, I woke up (yay, I woke up, which means I was asleep!) with everyone else. Basil patched together some of the food we had left (way more than we could actually eat) and we had bagel-poached egg-spinach-onion-cheese and tomato sandwiches for breakfast, follwed by the most restful Meeting I've had in quite a while. It made me remember some of the reasons that I kept going to Meeting this year. I'm never quite sure of my beliefs, but this morning I had moments where it seemed impossible to doubt that the Light was there with us.

I've basically spent the afternoon putting music into the iPod that Uncle Larry bought me. I was going to go contra dancing with Robin, but I decided I was too tired and wanted some alone time at the last moment. So now I'm sitting here listening to music and reflecting on the weekend. Nice.

Hm, I suppose this blog is supposed to be about Mali, isn't it? Well, I have been thinking about Mali a bit, but to be honest, the prospect of leaving DC is more on the forefront of my mind. I'll only be here another week and a half or so, and then it's home to Wisconsin and off traveling for a month or so before I leave for Mali. I've been feeling kind of mixed about this on and off, and I'm sure I still when I leave, but now that the end of my time here is staring me in the face, I'm feeling a bit better. Like now I can finally take some concrete steps in getting ready to leave. I'm no longer stuck in that "between-time" before I leave, and I think that's kind of a relief.

This morning when I was sitting in Meeting, I was trying to meditate a bit on the idea of home. The past few years, feeling at home anywhere and settling in has kind of been the last thing on my mind. I've been more interested in exploring. But as I was thinking about my time in DC, it seemed to me that I could really make this place a home and be very happy here. That made me feel kind of satisfied, as if even if I'm leaving, I can always come back. Not that I didn't know that before, but it just felt like more of a comforting idea this morning than it has.

Well, I think that's it for now. I promise to write more about my thoughts on the Mali trip and what I'm learning about Mali in future posts.

Still in DC, thinking of Mali

It's Sunday, so I've got some free time on my hands; thought I might start another blog and see how far it goes. I think I've had one or two before that I put a few entries in. I'm sure no one ever read them, though, and I forgot about them rather quickly. However, having a blog could be a good way to keep people updated as to what's going on with me, and to record some of what's going on.

Got my invitation to go serve in Mali with the Peace Corps starting this july (two months from now) about three weeks ago. I've gone through this weird gamut of feelings since then, some related to Mali in particular, but a lot having to do with leaving DC. I came here almost a year ago because, well I'm not sure why- I interned here the summer of 2005 and remember a distinct feeling of being happy to leave for whatever reason. But then sometime senior year at Bryn Mawr, things changed and there seemed to be a lot of good reasons to go to DC. I had been planning to go off to France to teach English, but that plan began to seem less and less practical, money-wise and just for other reasons, such as that I don't really like being the teacher in a classroom setting, something that could definitely get in the way of enjoying that job. And then there was the fact that I wanted a social life after boarding myself up in Canaday Library with a bunch of books for most of senior year. It seemed like DC, where there are a lot of young people interested in social justice issues, a lot of group houses and so on, would be a more likely place to build a healthy social circle than some French country village.

I don't know, it's odd how these choices get made. I think I had some vague idea of what my life would be like here that seemed very idealistic and utopianistic. Now considering Mali, I'm not sure how I feel. I think about it and half the time I think I'm just looking forward to getting back from being abroad and feeling as if I've "seen the world" and I can settle down. Part of me is so tired of leaving places and starting anew; I'm not sure how many more times I can do it.

I had some concept in my mind the summer I was here working at the Smithsonain, I think, that after graduation I would live everywhere for a couple of years- everywhere in the US, maybe go back to France, and then after I had lived everywhere I would decide where the best place was for me. I don't know that I really have the energy for that scenario, however. It occurred to me a few months ago that I should just do whatever feels right. Maybe it's not that important to have lived in California, Washington, Washington DC, Boston, all these places that I had in my mind, if that's not what I want to do. I can always settle somewhere and then move if I feel like I want to move when I want to move.

So I've been feeling a bit conflicted about the Mali invitation because I feel like I could stay in DC and be relatively happy. But I know in the end that I wouldn't be happy if I passed up a chance like this. Is that the right attitude to have, do you think? Is that the kind of feeling that should compell me to go or compell me to stay?

I got a book in the mail yesterday that I ordered a week ago or so, an introduction to the Bambara langugage. Bambara is the most widely-spoken local language in Mali. I don't know if it will be the language that they speak in my village, but I figure it's good to get a head-start on studying it anyway. Things I've learned so far: Bambara is a tonal language, meaning that the meaning of words differs based on how high or low the pitch you articulate them with is. The book said not to focus too much on what word is which pitch, however- rather to just try to imitate the way the instructor speaks on the audio recordings as much as possible.

I hope I have enough discipline to get myself to study this. My French-studying so far has been kind of put on the back burner. I've been listening to news stories on RFI.fr to try to get some listening practice and I bought a book by a Malian author- Le devoir de violence, by Yambo Ouologuem. So far I've made it through the first page (!) with a long list of vocab words that I had to look up multiple times. This relative lack of success at reading it so far has made me think about how I have a hard time getting myself to read French books for pleasure. It occurred to me that one of the reasons I have such a hard time reading in French for pleasure is that I have no deadline to have read the book by and I want to take the time to understand everything. On the other hand, when I read in French for a class, there is generally a deadline and I use this deadline to motivate me not only to get through the book but to tell myself that it's okay to just skip through some parts if I don't understand them, because I get the general sense and it's more important to get the job done.

I was also thinking lately of how my language-learning skill is so centered around the written word. I have a hard time even starting to get a handle on things until I can see things written out. I like everything to have an explanation and to be manifested visually. This could be part of the reason that I have such a hard time with the oral side of language-learning. I think I turn the whole process into a very academic thing; language-learning for me has thus far been largely about understanding a language enough that I can pass this test or that test, or write a paper. I've never really had to use foreign languages as a social tool before, aside from my stint in France. And given my relative shyness, it's not surprising that this part of language has not taken prominence in my mind. Kind of strange, since socializing is what language is all about.

Maybe my time in Mali will help me with this; help me take foreign language-learning out of the textbook context and into the much scarier, fluid, world of the spoken word.