5 Months and Still Kickin'

The last couple of weeks have been beyond busy, which was a huge change after two months of monotonous boredom. I’ll try to be thorough and not boring but I can’t promise anything. After an extended visit to Kayes I came back to site with an extra bit of confidence that really motivated me to start doing some actual projects. Since I am still in the stage where we’re not supposed to do projects I decided to just start the conversations and put the ideas into the head of my mayor who has been really helpful and enthusiastic about me doing work. First I went to talk to the teacher at the pre-school in my village to find out what kinds of improvements she wanted to make for the building as it was. The buildings are actually brand new given to the village by an organization from their sister city in France, but actually running the school and maintaining it has been left to the village. The pre-school teacher said she wanted a garden but water costs money and the plants require a lot of water and the ground needs sand for the kids to play on because right now it’s mostly rocks. Eventually we need to get books and toys and money for the teacher to give the kids snacks. I told her before we did anything we have to clean up the trash around the school then we can start talking about improving the facility itself. I talked to the mayor about all these concerns and he said okay we’ll get everyone to go clean up garbage on Sunday. He wanted me to go to a meeting and talk to the village about my ideas, and that on Sunday we would all clean up the garbage in the village and burn it. I wanted to build a compost pile but I think I was being a little to optimistic at the beginning. At the meeting I didn’t even get to talk and it was all in Soninke (the local language and I only know about three words of it) it lasted three hours and at the end they were like “Mariam, très bon…” I told the mayor I didn’t get to talk and he said he told them what I wanted to do and they’re all cool with it so we’ll see you Sunday.

I was kind of surprised but excited to see what was actually going to happen so Friday I went to my host family’s house for another Denkundi (baptism/naming ceremony) and took pictures of everyone and ate good food. I’ve started to LOVE hanging out with my host family and I feel like I’ve finally become a part of their regular routine. I’ve been knitting hats for the kids and now I’m working on taking good portraits of the kids so I can give their mother’s photos for gifts. That day my friend Amy text messaged me to say that she wanted to come do some physical labor in my village so I told her about the garbage clean-up so she came out to help on Sunday morning. She and I helped with one of the bigger areas covered in garbage while other villagers swept the roads and cleaned the area by the pump. We didn’t end up getting to build a compost area but it’s definitely something we can do later, it was just exciting to see the village doing work that I wanted to get done without asking any questions.

The couple of days before this I was helping out with the vaccination campaign was to start a few days later by going from concession to concession to inform mothers about the event.From December 13^th through the 19^th the health people from my village were giving vaccinations for Polio and Measles, giving children Vitamin A supplements and a pill to get rid of any stomach parasites as well as a treated mosquito net to each child who was vaccinated. The even started chaotic as usual but the day went by quickly. Working from 8 to 5 for 5 days straight (it actually ended for us on Monday) was beyond exhausting and took up all of my time. I was totally impressed, again, with how hard the people in my village were working and have worked and it makes me anxious and excited to start working on projects with them.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to prepare my house for me to leave for 3 weeks in January for IST (In-Service Training) in Bamako. I’ve been planting trees and building my compost pile and now I have to dig up flower beds for planting tomatoes and green peppers and squash for when I come back after IST. On Sunday a random group of Tubobs came to my village who actually spoke English. I found out about the event about ten minutes beforehand and had to go change into nice clothes, everyone was really excited to see me dressed up. They all said you're finally a Soninke woman. The tubobs were there from the French Foreign Commission to find ways to improve development. They came to my region because there is a high rate of emigration to France in my ethnic group which increases the standard of living for many of the people in my region. I'm not really sure why else they were there, they did look at the preschool which is why all the kids were there in their uniforms. I talked with a British woman for a while which mostly made me feel dumb, what is it with their accents?

Anyway, I really hope everyone has an amazing Christmas and New Years. I’ve started to realize how far away I am as I’ve rounded out 5 months out of the country. This is the longest I’ve been away from home and I’m really starting to feel at home here. I have good days and bad days, but I have never once questioned my decision to come here. The bad days are usually brought on by other factors like not being able to communicate or getting sick (I had giardia last week) so I’m always able to calm down when I recognize that being upset is just exacerbating the problem.

I was talking to my sister the other day and she asked me if I felt like I was able to jump back and forth between hanging out with the men and the women, like I’ve created a third gender, but actually I feel like a kid most of the time, mostly because I don’t have kids and so my responsibilities are only in taking care of myself which is never the case for Malians. It’s liberating but sometimes I feel like people are taking care of me too much and should allow me some independence. My homologue and I have grown a lot closer and I’m really excited to have her as a friend as well as a co-worker. All in all life is good in Goumera!

Right now list of good things to send:

Dog treats

Granola bars

AAA Batteries

Lotion

Face Wash

Curry (my host family LOVES it)

Instant Pancakes

Instant baking mixes

Seeds (vegetables or flowers)