In Africa: My Village

The surrounding area around my village is awesome and I'm sure that I'll spend a lot of time hiking around it and getting to know the lay of the land. I have no or very little cell phone service in my community and it'll be rough getting to the town that has reception because it's far. I'll do my best to make it out there every three weeks or so, so Mom, I'll call...just more infrequently (yes that's possible).

As for the rest of the details of Ganfa, I'll start with some personal description. The players:

The Bandis (from the French word for Bandit, bearing the same meaning)

The Bandis are a group of 5 to 10 year old boys that runs around my village constantly getting into trouble. They are a gang of about 8 sling shot toting trouble makers that are constantly in some sort of scuffle. The lead is actually one of the youngest and doesn't yet go to school. Malinkes have a way of pronouncing F's as H's, and this kid's name is Fambaga, pronounced Hambaga, so I call him Hamburger -and he's quite the ham. His close associate is his cousin who is about a year or two older. His father runs a boutique that sells tea, soap, rice and sugar. The way the sugar is sold is in small plastic bags and after they are used on pots of tea or mone, the bags are set aside to blow away in the wind. This young Bandi has realized this and has grown a taste for the sugar lined plastic and often times when I see him running around town he's got one of them in his mouth, so I call him Sweet Tooth. Hamburger and Sweet Tooth's other associates vary from day to day but often involve the same group of 5 or 6 which I have yet to learn all of their names. I attempted to recruit them, in my rudimentary Bambara, to help me protect the flowers in my concession that my homologue planted from the sheep that burst through my gate and decide to eat them. The first meeting for my Department of Concessional Defense was yesterday and during the middle of it, Hamburger saw it fit to walk outside the wood fence that lines my concession and pee. I didn't see this because I was reading a book at the time, but was notified of it by the other members shortly thereafter at which point the group decided that I should grab a branch from the tree, strip it of its leaves and teach Hamburger a lesson. I declined the offer and decided discretion would be best as it is our first meeting and if I lose the kingpin, I would surely lose the rest of the Bandis as well. Another thing about the Bandis and what gives them their name is that they really can't be trusted with much. They're always wanting to play cards with me, though none of them know how to play correctly, but whenever I indulge in playing or try to teach them they find ways of cheating and removing any aspect of competition from the game as they quickly gang up and claim victory. Cards with them for now is a lost cause.

Hamburger manning the slingshot with sweet tooth on the right.

The Musow (The Women)

They work incredibly hard and spend most of their day cooking and taking care of the kids. All of them are incredibly friendly, but our conversations don't extend much past standard greetings as they only speak Malinke for the most part. I'm quite positive that every girl above the age of 12 could easily beat me up. They throw around 20 liter water jugs like it's nothing, pound millet for hours with these over sized mortar and pestles and from this have incredibly muscular arms. With that in mind I've done my best to stay on their good sides and oblige to help them whenever asked with corn harvest or peanut shelling.

Cew (The Men)

Most of the men work in the fields all day doing back breaking labor with small tools that cause you to stoop over and put a lot of stress on your back. Most are very good natured and happy to help me learn Bambara while drinking tea and discussing local politics. Two of the notable cew in the village are my homologue Nwugoun and my friend which just left for Bamako for 3 months today Niouma. They have both been very helpful in getting me adjusted to the village life. Nwugoun is a very soft spoken good guy who is the first Malian I've noted in my village to enjoy the look of flowers. He planted some in my concession, but they were quickly eaten by sheep. My favorite time with him was when I was just getting into Bambara and my knowledge of it was really poor. He came over after dinner and we sat and watched the toads that lined up around the light to eat the bugs. He started throwing little pieces of charcoal at this one who when pelted with the little pieces would lash his tongue out and gobble down the charcoal. Bambara makes you sound like Yoda from Star Wars if translated word for word and at the time I was still listening to sentences and doing that and Nwugoun turned to me and said "Look, great hunger has this one" as he threw more charcoal at him which the toad continued to eat. I laughed pretty hard when I heard that and realized that Nwugoun and I had a lot in common as we both found it hilarious that this stupid toad would keep eating charcoal.

Nwugoun with his flowers

Niouma is a bit different from Nwugoun. He's a little bit taller than me and with roughly the same build. He's a bit more a ladies man than the average Ganfan man and shows it with crisp, clean jeans and a button up t-shirt (always with the collar up -I haven't figured out how to talk fashion with him yet, but hopefully I can convince him to change that). Niouma is one of the guys I go to the market in Dioukeli (Joe-kelly : a village about 11km away) with every Thursday. He takes a lot of offense to people that try to rip me off because I'm white and he ends up doing a lot of my bargaining for me in the market.

Cewkoroba (old men)

Most of the old men speak Malinke so I don't spend too much time with them. The majority of them spend their days making baskets out of palm fronds and drinking tea. One of the nicest guys in the village is Mamadou Diaby and he has taken it upon himself to make sure that everything is taken care of for me. He does a lot of work with pump maintenance and is one of a select few people who can actually read. Unfortunately, his sight is going and with that is his ability to read. He's currently blind in one eye and has depth perception troubles, so I help him by lighting his cigarettes for him. He has this uncanny skill of holding on to his cigarettes without ashing them and building this 3 inch long ash trail all the while making vigorous hand gestures (as pantomiming things is one of the best ways for me to communicate right now). He has a ton of knowledge about water sanitation and pump maintainance and is very excited that I'm in his village.