Candy-Palooza

Cockadooooodledoooo! Greetings from Mali (where the roosters begin their day at 4:00AM)!

Currently my friends Kat, Mary, and I are in Bamako, Mali’s capital city where Peace Corps ‘ office is. We are going to do a little shopping in places where we can get things we can’t get in our villages, and check in at the office to exchange some books in the library, pick up packages, and resupply on medical items.

I am WAY excited to get the letters and packages some of you have sent. My mom and Dad sent a package with a Frisbee that I know my kids will get a kick out of. Speaking of my kids, I will try to upload some pictures on here but if they don’t load, check out my facebook page to see some of them. I tried to get them to smile for the pictures, since they are always smiling in real life and I want you all to see them looking happy, but a lot of Malians don’t smile for pictures, so most of them aren’t smiling. They LOVED seeing the pictures though on the camera screen when I took them and burst into laughter and smiles when I showed them their images. It was the first time I took photos of my family here but I have a feeling they are going to want to take a lot more when I get back since they enjoyed it so much.

Life at site has been going very well.  Every day I become more comfortable and my language improves. I even surprised myself with what I was able to squeak out when my host father was asking me questions the other night. Also the other day when I was running (on a BEAUTIFUL dirt road that goes to one of the market towns nearby) two dogs started barking at me and chasing me a little bit and my gut reaction was to yell at them to stop in Bambara… so I think that is a good sign of language learning. I also picked up a life skills book at the Peace Corps office with Bambara translations and I think that will be helpful in language acquisition as well.

Some of you have been asking about what work I am doing right now and what my job duties or projects are. Mostly right now for these first three months after being installed at our sites we are focusing on language acquisition, community integration. We are also supposed to complete three community needs assessments  education, food security, and gender analysis) during this time. I haven’t begun these needs assessments as I don’t feel like my language is at the level to be successful, and I think I will begin around the start of our second month at site. Pretty much what I do during a given day is wake up, greet the people in my compound, eat breakfast, go to my teacher’s house for an hour of Bambara class, do chores, play with my kids, sit around with the older girls while they braid hair, and sometimes go with my Grandma to other compounds to greet people.  When my family shells shea nuts or peanuts I help them do that, and sometimes I go to the fields to pick up the weeds that the women are removing with their “dabas”, or weeding hoes. Once a week I go to the market in one of two towns around where I am to stock up on food.

Here are a couple of things that happened this past week:

1.)    When I was cooking dinner, two goats tried to walk into my house. (Dave said that if I ate meat I would have had a free meal)

2.)    I killed another scorpion in my house this week and left it on the ground when I went to bed. When I woke up it was gone. I am assuming the army of crickets took it away to be eaten.

3.)    A chicken is roosting on the wall of my compound and has around 12 eggs there. I can’t wait for the chickies to hatch (CHICS!)

4.)    Mary and I unsuccessfully tried to resolve an issue with our tailor in Kati (who made really unflattering clothing for us, omitted the headscarves and one skirt that I had asked for, and decided not to refund me for those items for which I already paid). I am bad at handling these situations in the states and with the language barrier it was crazy! Luckily I’m only out around $2 USD.

5.)    Some of the little girls in my compound were really happy with me the other day because I helped them wash their dishes and do some chores. They took me around to little secret spots like where the boys play drums in the millet field, and to some gardens I hadn’t seen before. Then they wanted to take me to the place where they poop by a tree so they could poop… I told them I would meet them back at home.

There’s a little glimpse into my life here!

I miss you all at home a lot. Congratulations to my sister Marni who got married on Saturday. I am bummed I couldn’t be there for the wedding and I hear it was just beautiful.

Fast forward… my time in Bamako is over and I am now at Mary’s house in Kati. We had a salon night – I cut Mary’s hair and have henna setting in my hair as we speak (thanks to the package from Mom!) I will leave to go back to site tomorrow after we make one more trip to the fini kala yoro (tailoring place) to resolve some saggy crotch pants issues.  Women don’t really wear pants here so I guess I can’t blame him for making me men’s pants… but it’s not a cute look.

I hope you are all doing well and staying healthy in the states. I am officially over my cold and can now taste things again, just in time to devour some of the delicious candy in the packages from Mom & Dad and Allison. You guys are the best!

As you all enter the fall season please drink lots of pumpkin flavored coffee drinks and eat Einstein’s pumpkin shmear for me! And when the leaves change color for my friends in the north, take pictures and send them to me in an email, or throw some leaves in an envelope with a little update on your life and send it my way! I’ll probably get it two months later… seeing as that’s how the trend goes. For those who have sent me letters, I’ve only gotten one from Stef, so hopefully yours will find its way to Bamako somehow after floating around the planet for a while. I’ll be crossing my fingers.

Take care, stay safe, and thanks again for all of your support.

Jamie (Assetou Diarra)

Ameriki Kaw Ka Kene?

Hello Friends!
Greetings from Africa! I hope this finds you well and healthy in the states!
I am well and healthy here in Mali. Currently I am at my friend Mary’s house enjoying a little break from village life to do some banking and shopping in a bigger town and enjoy the amenities with which Mary has been provided by the NGO she works with.
Today marks 3 months since my stagemates and I stepped on the plane to begin our Peace Corps journey. It seems like that time has flown by, and at the same time some days have felt like they crawled slowly. After swearing in as volunteers on August 5th, we went off to our sites. I arrived at my site on August 10th, so next week Saturday (MARNI’S WEDDING DAY!!!) will mark one month at site. The first month is supposed to be pretty hard at site for everyone, and I proved to be no exception. The first two weeks were difficult to adjust to this new way of living without the comfort and support of the other people I had grown so close to during training. There were some rough days, but this past week I feel as though I reached a milestone in my comfort level and community integration.  My language level is improving slightly, and I feel less awkward in social interactions of day to day living.
The people of my village are all super friendly and welcoming, but part of the difficulties of the first two weeks came inadvertently from comparisons to the previous volunteer whom they adored, and their expectations from me. I don’t speak a lot of Bambara yet, but I do understand more than I can speak, and hearing “Oh, she doesn’t understand Bambara… She doesn’t understand French either? Oh, well the previous volunteer could speak French” started to grate at my confidence. I told myself and was reminded by friends and family that you just have to take it a day at a time and that the language and cultural knowledge will come bit by bit. It has, and every day is better than the day before. Now people say “Oh she can understand a little bit of Bambara, oh she’ll learn  little by little”, and even a few people have said “You’ve arrived” when I’ve made a funny joke in Bambara or understood a lot. That boosts my confidence a lot.
This past week has been really great in village. The end of Ramadan fasting was celebrated on Tuesday with what is called Selifitini, or a big feast and celebration. My villagers normally never eat meat except for holidays because it is too expensive, so they had meat with their meals and ate pasta and rice instead of the usual toh (mushy millet dish), which was a treat for all. The kids all got a new outfit, and the women and girls all put new braids in their hair and put on their best tailored complets. There was music, dancing, chatting and a lot of tea drinking. The kids went around giving blessings in response to which adults gave them small change and the kids bought little candies and gum from my host father who owns a small butiki out of one of the rooms of his house. In the morning, my host grandmother took me out to the field where many men and older women placed their prayer mats toward Mecca and prayed together for the holiday. They allowed me to pray with them which I was thankful to have the opportunity to do. They allowed some younger boys to pray with them too but they were making too much noise so the women would throw little pebbles at them while they prayed to keep them quiet.
The day before Selifitini was supposed to be a market day in a town 5k away. I was going to attend with my host mothers and host grandmother, but there was a death in one of the groups of houses near us, so we went over to give blessings instead of going to the market. Apparently there was a death of a child in a concession near ours the morning of Selifitini that my language tutor told me about, but I didn’t hear about it from anyone else and I am hesitant to bring it up for fear of not being able to communicate about such a sensitive matter in a language that I am not completely comfortable speaking.
In general things are great here and getting better all the time. I LOVE my kids in my village and all of the wives in my compound are really great. Malian women are so incredibly hard-working it impresses me every day. The men in my compound are great too and very helpful with any problems I have like helping to try and fix my bike, or patching my roof.
I have fallen in love with a baby goat whose mother died shortly after it was born. The kids know I love this goat so they bring it to me and they make sure I know when they feed it (they have to hold down a lactating female goat while the orphaned baby goat drinks its milk). I know that eventually this baby goat will grow up and become a part of some celebratory meal, but I can’t help but get attached to it. We call it Badenni (baby goat).
I am returning to my site tomorrow morning after banking with Mary, but I will have access to internet again the following week when I go into Bamako with some friends. Hopefully the letters and packages that have been sent will be waiting for me in Bamako too. Thank you so much for all of your support and love. I appreciate every bit! If you have time, shoot an email my way with what’s been going on in your life!
Take care!
Jamie (Assetou)