The HILARIOUS Compilation of My Periodicals

It occurred to me while typing my last blog that I have completely lost my sense of humor so I’m going to try and be funny again. Especially because Africa is not a sad place at all, it’s quite hilarious actually so I hope you have a good laugh after reading this:

Camping

Oh, the outdoors. Wild animals, fire wood, tents, no electricity, smores. Wondrous things. The most wondrous thing about the outdoors is that we spend a ton of money and time planning and carrying out these wild excursions only to climb back in our cars after a week or two days and move back into our houses that our predecessors spent years developing so that we had no reason to be in the outdoors. I was just telling one of my friends about Mt. Everest (because I had just read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer who is my current love obsession) and, can you believe, but these silly Africans had never heard of Mt. Everest. To be honest they probably don’t even know what a mountain is let alone care that there might be one that is very very very high. Even stranger yet, but to spend EXTRA time in the outdoors, cold outdoors, no less, climbing one of these supposed monstrosities is beyond comprehension for these people. It’s not that they’re simple minded or even uneducated, it’s that they are logical.

Think about how absolutely nuts you have to be to voluntarily leave your nice warm home with electricity to go out in the freezing weather so high up that you can’t even breath AIR on your own. Lunatics. The funny thing is that I understand this urge, I can’t empathize because I agree with Malians that the cold can be awfully formidable, but I have many many friends who spend much of their time, in fact, they get paid to lead others over crevasses and up mountains. (I didn’t tell the Malians about crevasses; that would be too much to handle). What I’m trying to say is that Americans are nuts for wanting to go camping, it doesn’t make any sense. Yes, the outdoors is beautiful but when you have the ability to never have to visit them, why should you? I went to a Sherman Alexi reading when I was in Spokane just before I left for Mali and he said “To me, the ‘outdoors’ is just one big hallway between buildings.” I think Malians are inclined to agree. The funny thing is that they spend ALL their time outside, they cook outside, they LIVE outside, some of my neighbors don’t even have walls because why would you? It’s hot here and if you never have to change clothes or do anything private (which Malians don’t) then you’re set.

Dreams

Hot. Chicken. Peanut. Shoe. These four words are pretty funny. My host-family can’t get enough of “hot” this “hot that…But seriously, who came up with the word chicken. It’s certainly a fitting name for such an odd creature but WHAT does it mean?

The last time I burned my fingers on my food my bowl-mates (people eating out of the same bowl as me, which I do for every meal) all chimed, “Mariamu, Hot! Hot!” (because I had taught them this word) and then I said something I regret, I said one of the many quips my mother created when I was a child because she is good at rhyming and at annoying me. I said, “hotsy totsy.” And like trained monkeys my bowl-mates repeated it. It was like my mother was there, except ten years old and black. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it had only been the one time, but later, IN THE SAME 24 HOURS, I let slip another of her poetic verses, “hungry mungry.” Now, whenever my mother would say this, I would get this image in my head of this blue nice-monster (not unlike cookie-monster, actually, I think it was cook-monster’s twin because it really looked identical to him), so I have always associated this little phrase with a monster. The odd thing is that I don’t why I would put a monster with this phrase because my mom meant to describe the person who was hungry as Hungry Mungry and not refer to some other thing. I was never really afraid of monsters when I was little, or I never really thought about them much. Nor the boogie man, this is because there was never a clear description of what exactly a boogie man was. I remember I laid awake one night agonizing, literally crying, over the imminent death of our family cat, Igor (I was probably 6 years old). Now, if any of you ever met Igor you would know that he was estranged of our whole family and still more would not die until I was at least 10 or 11. He was estranged probably for the sole fact that we existed, and because he was castrated, probably, I don’t really know but he was very ornery. At any rate, instead of being afraid of the boogie man, who I was pretty certain didn’t really exist anyway; I was upset over the death of a cat that I didn’t actually love. I think it was more the concept of death that terrified me, which is pretty profound for a six year old. Boogie sounds more like something that would be terrifying in its hilarity, but, say if it were your father, being boogy-ish and you were 14, it would be likely that you would be very scared for that to appear. “Boogie” sounds like something that is terrible at dancing in that rhythmically challenged Elaine (from Seinfeld) sort of way. For Malian, children, as it were, white people are the equivalent of our boogie man.

I guess they must be woken at night by nightmares of white people doing, who knows what? Maybe they dream about white people forcing their family to work very hard so that they may steal their country’s natural resources for an outlandish profit. Maybe, just maybe this fear is justified. I remember when I was ten or eleven, I had just finished reading Number the Stars and I immediately had a nightmare about Nazis killing my dad (the dream was even in black and white) and my friend’s dad. I was realistically terrified of genocide and guns which I think is pretty advanced for a ten year old, so all you ten year olds out there worried about something under your bed have a nightmare about something less fruity and man-up. I digress.

If you need a moment of clarity I suggest saying out loud the names of objects in front of you and try and make of list of things to make my host-family laugh. I assure you, there are more out there and if anything it’s probably effective at staving off Alzheimer’s. I can see it now, you’ll think you’re alone at the office and someone will hear “desk? No. stapler? No. computer? No.” coming from your cube. Good luck.

Food

Apparently, in Bambara it is legal to have a different word for an uncooked food than its cooked counterpart (for example: cooked rice = kini; uncooked rice = malo, not even remotely similar). This is annoying because, as I’ve mentioned before, there is only one word for very important verbs to which in English we attribute seven or eight varieties. Everyday the menu in my village is porridge for breakfast, rice (cooked) for lunch and cous cous for lunch. Now, don’t you DARE confuse the yummy, thick, corn-derived cou cous that comes in the cute box with the southwest style art and the little window for verifying that it is, in fact, cous cous inside the box, for the absolute crap that I am forced to eat here. The greatest thing is that Malians LOVE cous cous, they can’t get enough, such that they even eat it for breakfast some times. They have never had it from the pretty little box with the window (because, of course, they make it themselves) so they don’t understand why kind of knowledge and perspective I possess when it comes to grain.

They eat cous cous here with green sludgey stuff. It’s completely impossible to identify what is in the sludge so don’t even try and in general it’s flavorless, thus, it’s edible, so I’m full usually at the end of dinner. The funny thing is that I was told by my neighbor that it is unadvisable to eat the green sludge with macaroni. Why? Because it causes diarrhea. This 100% incorrect and I know this because I’m not an idiot. And also because you get diarrhea if you see camels. This is true.

Last time I had diarrhea I acquired a serious ‘bout of Mr. D, a camel walked through our village. Last week I came down with dysentery and exactly that morning two camels showed up and stayed until my diarrhea had about finished and then they were gone. It’s a mystery and a very serious problem for me.

Privacy

As a teenager my mother would come to my room, open the door and stand in the threshold and stare at me for God knows how long. (probably 30 seconds to a minute) Then I would shriek, “What do you want?! Go away!” in my most adolescent of voices, which was obvious very polite. I still don’t know what she wanted from me because my comments always prompted her departure, but what was she expecting? “Welcome, giver of my life! You look ravishing today. Come sit let’s talk about happiness and friendship and hold hands and then later we can go run through a field of daisies and sing songs.” I don’t think so. Unless she was delusional. The only thing worse than having your mother gaze at you in wonderment as a teenager is having people do that now and not being allowed to tell them to go away. Obviously, I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to tell my mom to go away when I was a teen but this is much much different. Here is an example of the invasion of my privacy, an old woman came to my house WHILE I was sleeping, at 4 pm (nap time, I always say) and this is what happened:

Old Lady: Mariamu, Mariamu, Mariamu (she said this at least 10 times before I decided to quit pretending to be asleep and figure out why my dog didn’t bark at her and scare her away.)

Me: Good afternoon. (I didn’t get up, I stayed in bed)

OL: You were sleeping. (my favorite thing is when Malians tell me what I’m doing, ie. “You’re washing you clothes.” “You’re drinking water.” Everything I do, is noted verbally to the world.)

Me: Yes. (I was hoping terseness would persuade her to leave)

OL: Come out here and greet me.

Me: *Bitch, please.* (j/k, mom) I’m coming.

OL: You were sleeping, you look tired. Maya is in the field. (Maya is one of my host-sisters and my host-family is always telling me her status because her name was the only one I remembered after site visit because all the rest of their names require months of practice to say, let alone, remember.) You were sleeping.

Me: I was sleeping. I am very tired. You woke me up.

OL: Okay.

This went on for a good 15 minutes before she finally peaced out. I stood for the large part of it to make her uncomfortable but she didn’t feel it. I hate her. I really do. I wonder sometimes if God is going to punish me for this, because I was only napping and the poor old woman just wanted to talk but, seriously, it wasn’t the time. Old people here are terrifying, I don’t get why children don’t have bad dreams about them. The women never wear shirts so their boobs are all hanging down to their knees and you have to look at them and they have awful teeth (teeth is a huge thing for me) and sometimes they have missing eyeballs or even legs, so you understand why extra time with them is a little taxing on my aesthetics. Now my only fears are that I might come in contact with an old person. God help me.

Maladies

I have accrued a laundry list of weird ailments in the last few months (Why is it called a laundry list? I have never used any sort of list related to laundry and I make lists for everything.) Today, my host-family was particularly grossed out by my rather mild (compared to others I’ve had) cold sore. The funny thing is this is the only injury/illness I’ve had back in the states. My ear infection, 2 bouts of Mr. D, thumb blood blister, obscene acne and boil (this one is new!) did not alarm them in the least.

Just so all you squeamish judgers back at home understand, I have been getting cold sores since I was ten, I did not acquire it from some questionable or ‘risky’ means. The problem with cold sores is that they’re not curable, they’re ugly and painful. I haven’t had one for over a year because they’re brought on by stress and when you are sick because your immune system is down. I take meds for them and I can usually avoid them but this time it wasn’t possible. The dysentery gave me a fever and diarrhea and then forced me into my first Africa Anxiety Attack (AAA) since I’ve been here, so to console me through this tough day, God sent me a cold sore. Thanks, really, thank you.

I’ve been able to ignore this, because, as I mentioned, I have a golf-ball sized boil in an embarrassing place that I will not tell you all. It was brought on by an infected in-grown hair and I’ve been following all of the instructions in Where There Is No Doctor. This entails using heat compresses so the boil will burst and the infected material will exit. Exciting, right?

I made my weekly call to the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer). I say weekly, because I have problems weekly, not because we are required to call her. In fact, if you never got sick you would only have to see her 2 times in your whole service. Anyway, the boil finally burst and now it’s on the mend which is fabulous news because it means I don’t have staph. Yay!

Petting Zoo

When I finally lay down for bed at night I easily drift off into my Larium (malaria medication) dreams but only because I’m used to the circus that goes on outside. I swear when I come back to America I’ll be restless in the quiet.

The sounds of Africa mostly fall into the animal category, specifically farm animals. First, there are the cows, which do not make the stereotypical “moo” sound we read about in books. Any cow guru probably knows this, but what they really sound like are dinosaurs. I know this because I saw Jurassic Park AND Lost World. I wonder sometimes what Malians would do if a T-rex sauntered through town. Would they run? I think it’s a safe bet to assume that the T-rex is more afraid you than you are of it; but they are rather large. I think you can use this logic with almost any animal (except perhaps Rottweilers). Let me know how that goes.

The next animals are the most annoying: donkey, goats/sheep (I confess I really can’t tell them apart. If I saw a sheep or a goat alone I couldn’t properly identify it, but if they were standing next to each other I could figure it out. This is like that twin I dated in high school. When his brother (or him) would come to the door, I would stare him until he would do something that made me sure it was the right twin, this can be awfully awkward.)

Goats and sheep are very needy and if their mom is MIA they make high-pitched squeaky-toy noises and never stop. Never. When they are unhappy they make these weird dry-heaving noises (I don’t actually know if they’re sad, I just assume anything that makes that sound must be having a bad day) and then the rest of the time they make weird farting noises out of their mouths. All night, all day, every day and night.

Donkeys. Oh, Lord. I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen a donkey in America, in person. If I have it must have been an entirely ordinary donkey because it did not make enough of an impression on me to be remembered. In Mali, having a donkey seems to be like having any other domesticated pet, I would avoid cuddling with one. They are everywhere wandering around. Even in the cities you can’t avoid them. What is confusing to me is the sounds the make. Whenever I made donkey noises as a child (usually some sort of awful song like Old MacDonald was the reason) I had nothing real from which to reference the sound. The sound they make gives the impression that they are attempting, with great difficulty, to turn themselves inside out. I realized that I’m a little jaded by the exploding donkeys (as I call them), because my APCD came out for a site visit and was a little surprised when one erupted near my house. The worst part is at night when one donkey explodes they all have to and it’s like this choir of exploding donkeys going on and on while I’m trying to sleep.

Other weird animal things:

All the horses in my village are white and their tails are dyed red (it reminds of the Wizard of Oz horse). Chickens run around like toddlers chased by roosters. I’ve seen chickens run back and forth through a concession trying to avoid getting mounted by roosters for hours. There are a bazillion frogs in my village (this is an exact number) and they are all constantly trying to get inside my house. One got stuck in my kitchen for 5 days and when I finally got it out it had grown by three times, no joke.

The only thing I can’t get used to are the kids singing at night. I’m at a point where I hate children right now.

Greet and Greet

“[Informality and familiarity in American life] is symbolic of something more fundamental, I suppose. There is no tugging of forelocks here, you see, but a general assumption that no person is better than any other. I think that’s swell. My garbage collector calls me Bill. My doctor calls me Bill. They don’t tug for me. I don’t tug for them. I think that’s how it should be.” –Bill Bryson

“Greetings are the cornerstone to Malian society and culture.” This is what one of my friend’s local language tutors tried to teach her in their first class (he doesn’t speak any English, so you can imagine trying to figure out what this means without a translation). I think they spent the whole class, a couple of hours, trying to get this point across. She didn’t understand until she later asked one of the Peace Corps language teachers what he was trying to say. I certainly can admire her local language tutor’s persistence, especially because he’s right.

The problem with this is I hate greeting. In America, we are not obligated to greet anyone really and I love this. The only time I’ve been in trouble for not greeting is at family functions. “Go hug your grandfather,” my mother would say in that tone that suggests that if I had gone to hug him on my own volition I must be after something. If I said okay, and then didn’t go hug him, he wouldn’t notice. Partly because he doesn’t notice much of anything unless you’re Mexican or something else offensive like that. Luckily for me, I like my grandfather and while I may be spending a large portion of my time volunteering to help black people, I’m still his favorite. The thing is that Americans won’t disown their grandchildren if they fail to greet them properly. (My grandmother is an exception, but she’d probably also have a problem with you if you greeted her sweetly and then cleaned her whole house.)

Anyway, I would gladly go through life with the ability to greet whomever I wanted at my leisure and that if I didn’t greet someone they would understand that I just didn’t feel like it and they’d move on. The idea that greetings in America are the same no matter who they’re directed at is very refreshing for me. I’ve been in Mali for 4 months and I constantly take the easy route on all greetings and magically avoid shaking hands with as many people as I can. This is because I will not respond to young men or children whom I do not know. Sometimes I’ll stupidly not give someone the benefit of the doubt when they act like the know me and accidentally insult the mayor, women’s group president and my host brother all in one day. Fortunately, they all understood completely that it was an accident and we’ve moved on from it.

What Bill Bryson said, particularly rings true to me because it’s so American to have a level playing field. Even in my village there is this awkward distinction between rich and poor and especially the different ethnic groups. People who speak French or come from the cities have these sophisticated attitudes of being better than the average villager which is going to be difficult to navigate as I try to do my work.