Hope all is well and everyone is enjoying March and the welcome break of spring. I am currently adjusting to the heat of hot season and I have to admit, it’s really hot. It’s only reached 108 degrees thus far, but apparently in April and May it can reach almost 130 degrees…sometimes I wonder if people were actually meant to live on this land, or any extreme climate like this. At least I’ve been here long enough now that my body has started to acclimate and the 90’s are actually the equivalent of a perfectly lovely day.
I’m mildly embarrassed to confess that I didn’t really need to come into san today, but I have quite literally been dreaming about a cold sprite at night and thus made the trip to San. Most of the time I can deal with drinking what I can most accurately describe as bath temperature water, but at a certain point in time, it just doesn’t cut it. Plus, my good luck finally ran out and I’m sick…you don’t want to know the details but I figured I wanted access to both cold water and a real toilet over the next few days.
Site has gone well since I last wrote; Senegal was a delightful break from the day to day grind. I’ve been attending the secondary school several times over the past two weeks and working with the female English teacher. It’s pretty much unheard of for a woman to teach English in such a small bruce community and she has thus far served as a valuable resource to me. She is helping me plan a monthly workshop for the 8th grade girls about some life skills…relationships, decision making, peer pressure, fighting with friends, etc. As frustrating as it is, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that as much as I work with the older generation, they are “stuck in their ways” so to speak and the only way to make significant behavior change is to work with the younger kids and hope it carries through to the next generation.
I’ve had my first run in of the season with a scorpion and I’m sad to say that this most certainly will not be the last. Apparently during hot season they are absolutely everywhere. This scorpion was huge but they say that that’s good because it’s the little ones that can kill you…oh joy. On the bright side, I have yet to deal with rats and mice thanks in large part to the local cats and my homologues dog, whom I’ve named Duke.
I’ve now been here long enough that when I greet people in village I can’t really ask names anymore because I should know them, but learning a few hundred names is hard for anyone let alone when their names are impossible for me to pronounce in the first place. Fortunately, it’s a compliment to call people by their last names and nearly everyone in my village is a Coulibaly, so I get by most of the time calling people Coulibaly. Even if it’s not their last name, the Malians just laugh because a huge part of Malian culture is joking cousins. Mali is full of ethnicities and minority tribes so Joking cousins are used as a kind of tension breaker. Coulibalys are known to be bean eaters thus calling someone a Coulibaly who isn’t insinuates that they stink because they eat beans all the time. Other joking cousins involve calling someone a donkey, a blacksmith, a younger sibling (age is a huge status symbol here), your slave, etc. There are quite literally about 20 last names in Mali and certain last names joke with others, except for Coulibalys who can generally joke with everyone. A typical greeting in my market village goes something like this
I ni ce (hey)
Nsay (doesn’t translate but can kind be the answer to anything…men say “nbah”)
I ni sogoma (good morning)
Nsay I ni sogoma (good morning)
I ka kene (how are you)
Torotay (great)
Somogow be di (how is your family)
Bashi te (no problems)
Somogow dun (and your family…yes, you must ask about the family twice…I don’t know why)
Toro tu la (they are great)
I Coulibaly (you Coulibaly)
Nsay (you bet)
Hahhahaha, I be sho dun, hahaha (hahahaha, you bean eater, hahaha)
Hahaha, I ye Fali ye (hahaha, you donkey)
Then repeat asking the questions…this is an extremely simplified version of a greeting; I’ve often greeted someone for at least 5 minutes because there were countless benedictions and blessings to accompany the standard greeting.
I hope you all are all doing well; I’m sad to say that I’m suffering another bought of illness though I’m waiting for my medicine to arrive from Bamako and am anxious to start feeling better. I miss you and think of you often, especially when I’m sick and I long to be home the most. Your thoughts and well wishes help get me through these harder days and I can’t thank you enough.
Love,
Cait
