Tuesday, August 28, 2007

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.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

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

Monday, August 6, 2007

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.