This is what my homologue, Souleymane Dao, told me two Thursdays ago back at site after I talked to him about my work, or rather the lack of it. The past few weeks have been discouraging, to say the least, partly because the work I had been hoping to do at site has been stalled, partly because of difficulties adjusting back to being at site after three weeks away.
I got back to site a bit over three weeks ago, tired of traveling and ready to settle in for a while. I had decided that I wanted to try and break out of my habit of spending a week and a half or two weeks at site followed by a few days away in Koutiala or another city, all the better for my integration, I thought. I was going to spend all of February at site and become super-integrated. So for the first week or two, I worked dilligently on my Bambara, tried my best to spend free time with people instead of holed up in my house reading, and got Jelika and Adiaratou to give me some Malian cooking lessons. I painted the furniture in my house and posted some pictures on the wall in an effort to make it feel like home. Made French toast with the kids during one of our nightly tutoring sessions. Went to the baptism of one of Drissa's cousins and even managed to get myself to go for a run one morning! Okay, so going for a run doesn't have anything to do with integration, but it was a positive thing to do . . .
All of this was very well and good, but unfortunately being "integrated" also means that you have to deal with the annoyances of living in a culture much different from your own. In Mali, this means children yelling "toubab" at you as you walk down the street, having your progress on the language narrated by everyone you meet, having to greet EVERYONE ALL THE TIME, everyone asking you for money or gifts all the time, having people constantly asking you why you're not married, and being bored and lonely because there's no one who understands your own culture. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of things that I like about Malian culture/Mali in general (for example, people here are open to social interaction in a way that most Western cultures aren't, which makes it easier to feel welcomed into the community) just that after an extended period spent at site, the negative can begin to overshadow the positive.
In addition to these frustrations, as I've learned a bit more about the situation in my village in the past few weeks, I've become more and more uncertain of what kind of work I can do for the next 20 months (it's been 7 months here today!). The women's organization had a meeting the week that I got back to summarize the work they did last year and plan work for this year. Apparently, 2007 wasn't a year where a lot of work got done- they made soap three or four times and dyed cloth once. They hadn't done either of these activities since I got here. The soap making has become difficult because the oil prices went up so it's no longer a very profitable activity, and the cloth dying costs a large amount of money to get going. At this meeting, the ladies asked me if I could donate money to buy cloth to let them dye cloth, which took me aback a bit. I asked them how much, and they said 70,000 CFA, which is about $140. A lot of money, in other words, and not something I'm willing to donate, since I don't really see it as my job to give them my own money.
After this meeting, I had a look at their financial records, which was pretty eye-opening. Apparently the previous volunteer did donate a large amount of money to get them going on the cloth dying, and then made regular trips to Bamako to sell the cloth for the ladies. They made a large amount of money this way, about $400. However, looking at the records, there was a moment where a large portion of this money suddenly disappeared from the caisse. Talking with some of the women later, I found out that the women all decided to buy a large amount of cloth to dye the same color and make into clothes to wear togheter. Each woman would pay for a few meters of cloth. Unfortunately, not everyone had the money to pay for the cloth, and so even now, over a year later, there is a large amount of money owed.
In addition to this, the grant money from PACR looks like it's not going to come. I talked to their representative in M'Pessoba, Pascaline, who told me that someone higher up in the organization in Sikasso had decided that because some of the women are the wives of men who work as professors at the school or at IRCT (the research institute down the road), they had less need for the money. Additionally, she also said that the people of Feremuna live in the area because of the school (CAA), and if the state should one day decide to close the school (no sign of that as far as I know) and leave the land, the people would leave too, and PACR's investment in the land will have been for naught. Everyone in Ferme is pretty pissed, and understandably so. No one from PACR has come to the village to explicitly explain this decision. I had to go to the mayor's office four times before I finally managed to talk to Pascaline.
And Kolomuso . . . apparently the matrone has just begun doing baby weighing days and vaccinations again. However, talking to Adiaratou about the situation, I learned that women are not going to the maternity to have their children. For example, Hamadoune (the doctor at Ferme) just got a report from the matrone that last month, six women had their children at home and only two had them at the maternity. He says when we went up to Kolomuso for the vaccination campaign in December, he went and talked with some of the ladies, who said that they don't go to the maternity because they don't like the matrone and think she is incompetent. The matrone, Fanta, is completely aware of this, I learned when I went up last week to talk with them again. She gave me the impression that she would like to go somewhere else herself to find work, but she's married to someone in the village and so is tied down to the area. I have no idea at this point whether she really is incompetent, and each time I go up there I leave feeling frustrated because each time I go up we have trouble communicating and she complains that I don't speak Bambara as well as the previous volunteer.
So all of this leads me back to that discussion with my homologue. Don't be discouraged, he said, and I'm trying not to be, but sometimes I just feel like my head is going to explode. Which is why I'm in Bamako right now, taking a little mini vacation. Had my first hot shower in seven months Monday evening (felt so wonderfully clean . . .) and putzed around town yesterday, buying toubab food (read: ice cream, cheeseburgers and M&Ms). Made a visit or two with people at the Peace Corps bureau to discuss the way things were going. Might go see the museum in Bamako today.
Maybe when I get back to site things will start going better. The women did finally make soap on Monday before I left, so that's a good sign, right? Wish me luck.
The ladies make soap!
Relaxing in Bamako at Relax.
