November's Activities

The arrival of December marks the end of my 5th month in Mali. Cold season is starting and although many of you might not call it cold directly the 90 degree days somehow have a different feeling to them. The wind picks up and it's really dry. Peanut farming has ended much to the delight of my blistered hands and I'm headed back into Bamako for 2 weeks of training in water sanitation stuff. Not too much has been going on outside of some Bambara studying and I can't help feeling like I'm at some distant summer camp. It didn't really strike me that I was in Africa...until recently.

I was sitting in my concession a couple days before Thanksgiving and I heard a lot of people talking excitedly about 100m from my huts. The procession of about 20 people (most of them kids) was walking in my direction and after they passed and moved to my neighbor's concession my counterpart came over and said "Come quick, there's a big snake!" Usually Malians tend to exaggerate the size of snakes and I expected maybe a 5 footer. I found this:A 12 foot African Rock Python. They quickly killed it and looked around proudly as the meat was filleted. I asked the guy who's holding the snake in the above picture, Bonjugu, if I could try it. He looked at me a little funny as if it were a crime that I had never eaten snake meat before and while patting my back with a huge smile said, "Ni Allah soona, I bena sa sogo dun sufe" "If God wills it, you will eat snake meat later tonight." Apparently Allah had other plans and he willed me a wicked giardia relapse before night's end but before that, I couldn't resist the photo op with this 50lb beast :It's hard describing perspective to Malians and you can't really see the magnitude of the snake in my hands. (also, yes, those are his guts on the right side)
After the stark realization that reptiles like this roam around my village I realized that I was indeed, in Africa. It still feels a little like summer camp though.

Thanksgiving came and went and I decided to stay in my village to get ready for the biggest Muslim holiday of the year Tabaski. It synchronized well with Thanksgiving and I was able to feast with my villagers on goat and lamb meat. During Tabaski, everyone gets new clothes and decides to debut them, so I got a lot of family portraits of the 15 families in my village. Also, there was lots of music and dancing -an all around fun time.The village dancing with drummers in the middleMy host family in their new clothes

Mamadou looking innocent in his new complet (keyword: looking)

Some other interesting things that have happened that have furthered my realization that I'm no longer in the states:

One of the older guys in my village pointed at a line in the dirt in front of my house and said that it was a snake path. I asked him where the snake had gone and he said he didn't know, but probably over there and nodded his head in the direction of my house while making a clicking noise with his tongue. We searched around inside my hut and couldn't find it, so we went back out to re-examine the path which we both decided was conclusive evidence that it's most definitely in the hut somewhere. During my second look I started moving some things around while wielding a long bamboo staff, my movements being followed by a group of onlookers peeping their heads through the screen door to see what the commotion was about. I pulled back my trunk and heard a really loud hiss and knew I found him. The hiss and coloring was indicative of a certain species of viper that is known to inhabit this area called the Puff Adder. It was small and not very intimidating, but the sound it made and the defensive position it took made me realize he meant business. I'm not one for killing everything and ideally I would have liked to do a catch and release sort of thing, but with the group of Malians behind me, my reputation as a man in the village on the line, along with my knowledge of this specific snake and what it could do to the kids in my village if I released it somewhere and it came back, I decided it was best to use the Malian philosophy: Kill All Snakes. So, I smashed his face with the bamboo staff and walked out of my house to the approval of the crowd of villagers assembled outside my door. Check it out:

Okay, so it's an adolescent snake which hasn't quite grown into it's coloring. There are markings on its back resembling what an adult puff adder should look like, but I'm not 100% sure my assumption was correct. Definitely some sort of viper because I looked at his fangs during what I'll call a "field autopsy." (Sidenote: Mom, don't do any research on this snake, just trust that I'm taking necessary precautions to avoid them)

Also, I found what I think is some sort of whip scorpion under my pillow in the stage house. Not really sure though. It looked like this:

So, if these things haven't gotten you excited to come out and visit me I don't know what else to do. I'm enjoying the wildlife a lot and finally all of those hours I thought I wasted watching Discovery Channel snake specials are paying off.

Another cool thing I saw was a hippo territorial dispute. It was pretty intense, as this one lone bull approached the family that normally sits in front of the stage house in Manantali. There's something pretty crazy about seeing animals that are the size of mini-vans with 12 inch tusks and mouths that can fit full grown humans inside battling it out, good times. My friend Jason took these pictures below...we were at a safe distance without a good zoom on the camera and I've compressed the pictures to fit them on here so that's why the image is slightly blurry.
Here's some other pictures that I took that I can post because the internet is good right now:

Sunrise as viewed from the gate of my concession.

The Manantali Stage house (there's two huts side by side), in case you were wondering what I was referring to when I mentioned it. The river is right behind where I took the picture from. This is where I spend my time if I'm not at site, there's an actual toilette (not just a hole in the ground), power, a shower, and a kitchen.


The neighbors kid with the monitor lizard he caught and later cooked. Once again, I didn't partake in eating it or taking the picture, Jason did, and he said the meat was surprisingly good and tasted like chicken (in case you were wondering).

That's all for now. I'll be within email range for the next couple weeks, so if you'd like a moderately prompt response, from now until the January would be a good time.