I’ve just spent about three weeks at site without much reprieve and am thus thoroughly enjoying my trip to San. Of course, my trip was made even better because I didn’t have to bike in. My APCD (“my boss”) came to my site for a surprise visit to check on everything and he ended giving me a lift to San which was awesome, getting to ride in a car is always a treat.
My mailbox was inundated with letters that have arrived over the past few weeks and I can’t tell you how much it means to me. The holidays were anything but “normal” for me this year and it was so nice to hear things are still going on as “normal” back home. I had lots of questions asked in the letters so I’ll do my best to answer as many as possible without boring you too bad.
My past few weeks have been consumed with gardening, which is the primary activity during cold season. In the mornings I help in the women’s garden and in the afternoon I help in the family garden of my homologue. We currently are growing onions, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, some vegetable resembling an eggplant, beans, and we have several papaya trees that are just coming into season. In the women’s garden, we also have some trees in which we eat the roots of. I’m pushing for green beans and carrots next year, but it will take some convincing (there is not much of a demand in market for them). Gardening is incredibly demanding work. All the actual planting and tilling is done with hand held hoes made with a piece of metal wedged into a chunk of wood, kind of primitive but quite effective. Of course, this means that to garden you have to be bent over (there is no sitting or kneeling here; it’s always bending at the waist so that they’re pretty much doubled over). Of course, like most things in Mali I’m completely inadequate at gardening but I can help water the garden so in the afternoon, the young boys in the family draw the water from the well and fill the women’s watering cans and we water the whole garden. It takes about an hour every afternoon to water and then they have to weed and tend to the garden. We go to market every Thursday in a town about 10k from my village and then my homologue goes to San every Monday for market because he has a moto. I always ride my bike to market with Kari, my homologues best friend because he only has a bike too, and nearly all the women take donkey or horse drawn carts with their goods to sell. I can find pretty much everything I need at market as far as food goes, bread is always a treat because I don’t really get it any other time. The fish section of the market is downright foul smelling but the Malians sure do love their dried fish, I however tend to stick to the fruits and veggies. Watermelon season has just ended, sad to say, but we still have bananas and a cross between an orange and a lemon. There are “booths” set up everywhere selling everything you can image from nails to clothes to baskets and jewelry. The booths are actually just tarps tied together and to tree posts in attempt to block the sun, however, the ropes often hang low and more than once I’ve close lined myself while trying to navigate the chaos of hundreds of people bargaining and selling around me.
I’ve learned so much about reusing since coming to Mali. Potato sacks have absolutely unbounded possibilities. They’re used for storage, for sack gardening in houses for herbs, they can be shredded into individual threads and made into rope which is thus used to tie the animals up, pull water from the well, as clothes lines, “bungee cords” for loading goods on the donkey carts, etc, the threads of sack are also used to mend clothes as well as sew together leaking/broken gourd baskets. No waste.
I’ve learned how to make mud bricks which are incredibly heavy, and then made mud fences and houses from the bricks. I’ve learned how to make peanut butter, which is incredibly labor intensive and I’ll never be able to eat it as casually again without remembering what all went into making it. I help with the cooking and have learned to make toh, a classic Malian dish I choose not to eat on a daily basis as the Malians do. It too is very labor intensive. The millet has to be pounded, then sifted and pounded and sifted then cooked over a wood fire while stirring constantly at a consistency of cement. None of this is made any easier by cooking over a wood fire that causes my eyes to absolutely burn and tear and nose to run so that I’m blinded and stuffy by the end.
Our bank in village is surprisingly sophisticated in that we give out loans. We are only open Friday mornings, but last Friday alone we gave four loans. There is also a “savings account” so people quit tucking their money under their mattress, though the majority of people still do. Most people’s guarantees for their loans are a specified number of goats, cows or donkeys which I found pretty entertaining. Though not very long ago the primary punishment for people defaulting on a loan was to make them stand in the sun for two days and if the still wouldn’t pay, they’d go to jail, so I was very impressed to see this improvement in just a few years.
The African Cup of Nations is going on in Angola right now. I don’t know how much US coverage it’s getting, but there is such passion for soccer here that it’s all my village can talk about. The tournament actually started with Mali vs. Angola and it looked like it was all over when ten minutes to go, Angola was up 4-0, yet somehow, the final score was 4-4. I’ve never seen anything like it. The fact that the tournament is being held in Angola is pretty controversial and has been made more so by the recent attack on the Togolese team, killing three on their way to the tournament and causing them to drop out and return to Togo. The bus had just crossed into Angola from Congo when they were attacked by a local rebel group and the bus went under gun fire for nearly half an hour. Angola is also not a particularly easy place to get too and thus very expensive so not many fans get to go to the tournament though millions of dollars went into infrastructure and stadiums (remember that over half the population in Angola is living on less than a dollar a day). Also, Angola only ended their 27 year long civil war in 2002 and are still very much recovering in every imaginable context.
If anyone is interested, I have successfully defeated my sand trap when biking, though the count was lost well after it won for the 30th time. I figured it’s all about speed and leaving early in the morning before the sand has had time to loosen up and suck me in like quick sand. It’s been pointed out to me too that I hold my handle bars of my bike unusually and I realized that I hold onto my handle bars like I would hold the reins while riding with my pinky and thumb on the underneath of the handle. Americans and Malians both have commented on it and I’ve tried to change but to no avail.
Love,
Cait
