In Africa

I'm officially a sworn in Peace Corps Volunteer. Swear in was the 10th of September, so it's been some time since then. I meant to update this shortly thereafter, but it is hard to find a reliable source for internet. Anyhow, the swear in ceremony was similar to that of a small high school graduation -only with the main language being French and with Malian TV cameras there. Everyone met at the embassy, most in traditional Malian garb and my specific homestay group of guys in our own take on Malian attire. We chose some fabric from the local market and had the tailor throw it all together in what we still think to be a rather fashionable ensemble. You can be the judge for yourself though:

Soundougouba Homestay Crew (Colleen, Owen, Eric, Matt S, Me, Matt C, & Pilar)

Everyone: Risky Business

So we sat in the heat of the day listening to the speaches given by the Country Director, fellow volunteers who exhibited some of the different languages learned over the past two and a half months and finally the Embassador. After sweating through the speaches and congratulations we were invited to stand and take our vow to defend the constitution at which point the elation of the whole process struck us as we were now allowed to seek cooler shade the after party. I spent the night hanging out with my other 65 fellow volunteers in Bamako at various establishments allthewhile maintaining the most professional behavior and setting a spendid example of how a good American boy should behave. Seriously...

The next day we regrouped at the Tubaniso training center and prepared for the next following day which would take us to our sites for final installation and the upcoming two years of our lives. For the first three months we aren't allowed to leave our region which is kind of a bummer, but more so to make sure that we can hack it. However, in those three months we have relatively few objectives outside of getting as integrated as possible into your community. It sounds a lot easier than it is. My village, as I may have mentioned speaks Malinke, not Bambara which I learned in training. Granted, there are some similarities between the two but for the most part I have a lot of difficulty figuring it out. The problem is that they sound very much alike and since my Bambara was pretty poor upon arrival I assumed that I just wasn't understanding the Bambara, but it has become strikingly evident that their usage of Bambara is very limited. Unless I specifically preface a conversation with "please speak Bambara only," Malinke is the only spoken language. Even then, their conversations are peppered with Malinke words and different pronunciations of words than I'm not used to hearing and gaining full understanding of what's going on is quite a chore. The women, older men, and young children don't speak any Bambara. The men from about 12 to 50 speak Bambara. In a village of 400 people, that's about half. It's frustrating because I constantly get asked 'why I don't speak Malinke' and I respond with 'the same reason you don't speak English.' It's hard to maintain composure because I take a lot of flack from the kids that think it's easy to speak Malinke and since they don't hear me speak anything but garbled Bambara and horrid French and therefore assume that I'm retarded -then I just start speaking to them in English and get as angry at them as they do at me when I don't understand them. It's rough, but simple joys can be taken in the nicer families that find time to stop by my house with tea, peanuts and roasted ears of corn and more than make up for the troubles I encounter day to day with language. Overall, I love my village immensely, but there are some things that make living in it very difficult. The food is awesome. I usually eat alone and since they don't use utensils I use my hands. My diatigi's (jah tee gee : host) wives are excellent cooks and I'm supplied with tons of millet, corn or rice covered in tigadegena (peanut sauce) which is one of my new favorite things. I don't eat much meat, but since I've now witnessed an in-village slaughter of a goat, I'm not sure that I want to eat much. In between meals I spend my days eating peanuts and since we just harvested the corn, we've been eating a lot of ears of corn -at the peak I was eating upwards of 5 ears a day cooked on charcoal. I have absolutely no complaints about the food as the Malinke people are well known for having spectacular peanut dishes. My day to day routine goes as follows: I wake up at or shortly after 6 when one of my diatigi's wives brings water to bathe with. I take a bucket bath after about 30 minutes of light exercise. After that I read a little while and await the arrival of breakfast, usually in the form of mone (Moh-nee - millet porridge) or siri (rice or corn porridge). After that my supervisor usually stops by and informs me of his plan for the day at which point I agree to do whatever he's doing, decide to go work in the field with my homologue or diatigi or sit it out and study in my concession. There's no shade in my concession after about 10 AM and I'm forced to take refuge under the big tree in the middle of the village which is a common hang out for those who don't go off to the field during the heat of the day. Tea is made sporadically throughout the day (yes, I now own a tea set and am not afraid to admit it). The tea is half sugar and half tea and is served in the form of shots in small glasses. You have to be cautious about the timing of your tea drinking because if you drink it to late you'll be up all night...I've made that mistake several times. Also, cards are played as well. Usually a game called Cent Cinquante-et-Un (151) which is basically Malian Uno. Lunch is served around noon and dinner shortly after 7, after the sun has set. The problem with dinner is that sunset unleashes throngs of bugs from the grassy areas. If I wear my head lamp I will literally get rained on by bugs. Being that I'm too lazy to take my food inside and attempt to eat it under my bug net, I end up eating a lot of bugs. It's not a bad thing because most don't really have any taste, however, recently there's been this spawn of little flying beetles. They're about the size of an M&M and love flying right into my food. Initially I plucked them out, but with time I got complacent and lazy and haphazardly stuck my hand in the bowl and withdrew without looking beforehand. I immediately realized my mistake and came to the realization that these aren't normal beetles, but stink bugs. Since then I've been much more attentive to what I eat but there are so many of these bugs that it's impossible to avoid them all. I have yet to develop a taste for them, but the toads that come into my concession with the night who congregate in front of my area light like the ones that I throw out covered in tigadegena. Accompanying the thousands of flying beetles that come every night are hordes of toads to snack on the ones that stick around the light too long. After about an hour of aerial attacks by the beetles they stop coming and around 8 or 9 I can sit back and enjoy the full advantage of being in the middle of nowhere without power as the milky way stems from horizon to horizon and countless stars blur the constellations.