Meg in Mali: September 2009

This morning I ate some breakfast at 5:00 am (easy to do since it's the month of Ramadan and my host family is waking up around that time to eat and drink water to prepare them for fasting the rest of the day), went back to sleep for a while and then woke up again at six to get dressed and out the door. Today was the day of my "half marathon" that I've been planning to do since I started running nine months or so ago. On my regular runs, I usually make it to Station N'Tarla, the village where I did the garden project, about 5 km down the road. Today I passed Station, stopping to drink water at the house of the president of the women's organization there, and continued another 4 km down the road to N'Tarla, a larger village in the "brousse." All in all, the run was probably about 15-16 km, not quite a half marathon, but close enough as far as I'm concerned. It feels good to have made my goal, after working on running for close to a year. I can't say I'm very fast (clocked it at a bit over 2 1/2 hours this morning) but it is definitely satisfying to have made my goal.

I feel as if I've been making a lot of goals lately, in preparation for leaving Mali. Yesterday, for example, I cooked zamen, or riz au gras, successfully for the first time in Mali, all by myself, without burning or undercooking the rice, which has been my problem in the past (rice here seems to cook faster for some reason).

I've also been busy the past few months seeing some parts of Mali that I hadn't seen much of, and making some other athletic goals. In June/July, I took off for Manatali in the western region of Kayes, along with my bike. I rode first up the paved road from my site to Segou, about 110 km (60 miles), the first 75 of which I did the first day, spending the night at another volunteer's site, and then finishing up the next morning.

I then bused to Bamako and then Kita with my bike, where I met up with Calita, another volunteer, and we spent another day and a half biking to Manatali, about 150 km (90 miles). That trip was particularly beautiful, as it is rainy season and everything was lush and green. That part of the country is also pretty hilly, with some red cliffs sticking up along the side of the road as we went alont. About a quarter of the way was on a paved road, the rest on a red dirt road. We biked from the afternoon until dusk the first day, stopping to pitch our tents on the side of the road for the night and leaving early again the next day. Manantali itself was beautiful, the site of a hydro-electric dam that provides electricity for a huge chunk of West Africa. About 20-30 other volunteers showed up that weekend to celebrate the fourth of July, and I felt almost like I was on Cape Cod, relaxing in the river and playing cards for a day or two. There were a couple of hippos bathing in the river the first day, not quite Cape Cod, I suppose.

After getting back from Manatali I spent another month or so in the Koutiala region and at site, mostly just hanging out. I did manage to start a mural of a world map on the wall of the primary school in Ferme, which I just finished this week.

At the beginning of August, I left site again, this time for the Dogon region in the north, where some fellow volunteers had planned a 2 1/2 day hike. About eleven of us set out with a Dogon guide named Amadou, making a circle from Sangha, a village at the top of the cliffs in Dogon, to the bottom of the cliffs, then up onto another cliff, where we viewed the palace of the Tellum people, a group of pygmees that used to live on the cliffs about a thousand years ago. The last day of the hike, we walked along the cliffs for a few hours and then climbed a steep staircase leading back to Sangha.

Since getting back from Dogon, I've mostly been preparing to leave Mali, packing up my things, spending time in my village. We've had two parties since I got back (we did them both a bit early to avoid falling in the fasting month), the first at Station N'Tarla, the second in Ferme. At Station, the women hired local drummers, balaphone players (a xylophone-like instrument), and a singer to see me off to Ameriki. Everyone danced and rejoiced and so on. I also got my fifteen minutes of fame, because someone had called the radio from Koutiala, and they sent a guy to do a piece on the toubabu woman leaving Mali after two years. Though I never managed to actually hear it over the radio, I've been getting a lot of "I thought you had already left"-s from pelople around here since then.

We had a similar party in Ferme on Wednesday last week, pretty much the same minus the radio man and plus an hour or two of technical difficulties with the sound system. It turned out okay, though. Three other local volunteers, Hannah, Jenn, and Maridee came as well and hung out for the night.

Now I only have a day or two left at site before heading to Bamako to do paperwork until my flight out on Wednesday night. After that, it's three weeks on an organic farm in the south of France, and back home in October. Looking forward to that job market . . .