Wednesday, October 24, 2007

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.