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.. .