Joyeux Noël, Please Pass the Pork

This is the story of our Christmas in Bamako:

We were informed that Christmas Eve church would start at 9:30 and that we would be eating at 8:30. Even though nothing here ever actually happens at the stated time, Neal and I were fully dressed in our Jesus outfits and ready to go at 8:30.

Robert came to pick us up at 9:30, and informed us that no one actually wears their Jesus outfits until Christmas morning. We quickly changed, and set off for his house. After a meal of macaroni and pork that definitely would have been better warm, we set off for church. (Note: Pork is the official Christmas food here in Mali, I think just because Muslims can't eat it... except that many Muslims do eat pork on Christmas to celebrate with their Christian friends.) Anyway, Christmas Eve church was a somewhat painfully long affair featuring a variety of songs, a long sermon about basically every Bible verse in which God speaks to a person and that concluded with a side note on how Mary should be a model of submission to all women today, and a skit by the teenage girls in which we learned that converting to Christianity solves all marital disputes (all of this understood thanks to our helpful personal translator). I did enjoy the “hymns” the girls wrote for their skit, which I actually understood because they were all about food. Titles included “The chicken is done, Jesus come eat” and “Those who do not eat enough zaame will be judged.” After the almost 3 hour service was done, most of the congregation showed up to dance till dawn. Neal had been falling asleep during the sermon, so we were (thankfully) sent home to sleep with a joking admonition about how sinful it is to sleep in church.

Church on Christmas morning was supposed to start at 9 AM sharp, and we were told to be ready by 8 or 8:30. We should not have been surprised when Job showed up to get us at 9. Upon our arrival at church, there were no parishioners present, which gave us time to begin the endless stream of photo taking. The church decorations were now fully visible, largely made of sparkly garlands which apparently came with shiny party hats.

The morning church service was very similar to the evening one. In fact, the sermon was almost exactly the same (Neal says there are only a finite number of Bible verses about Jesus). The definite highlight came at the end of the service when members of each ethnic group represented in the congregation were invited to sing a hymn in their language. People got really into it and it is really cool to get to hear the linguistic diversity present in the community. The downside to this was that we were forced to sing a Christmas song in front of everyone. We (perhaps unwisely) selected “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” To further increase the farcical nature of the event, our Nigerian neighbor was forced to come up with us, despite the fact he had not been warned and did not know the song. Even better, this entire event was captured on video. I have not actually watched the video and prefer that no one ever discuss its contents with me, but it seemed unfair to deny you the spectacle. We're also including a video of the “junior choir” singing their hymn so you can fully understand how embarrassing our performance was. You can see the main choir in the background in their shiny new robes.

After church, we took even more photos before heading back to Robert's house. We ate delicious couscous and pork yassa (yassa is Senegalese onion sauce) and slightly less delicious dege  (yogurt drink). Robert's whole family was there and many of their friends, both Christians and Muslims, came to exchange greetings and get some food. There were too many great pictures from this process to pick just one – you can browse below to meet the Berthé family, see scenes of celebration, and see what happens when you make Job the photographer.

The day's celebration ended as all good Malian days do with us drinking tea. I will not claim I didn't miss the traditional trappings of American Christmas, but it was an excellent day.

And we didn't totally miss out – we came home to watch A Christmas Story on the computer (refusing Neal's suggestion that we start in the middle, as is tradition).

Our New Lizard Friend

As I went to take a shower this morning, I happened upon a new creature inhabiting our apartment. This time it wasn't a frickin' scary bug, but instead a lizard which (to the best of our understanding) eat the bugs that are the bane of our existence. It was only a baby, and Sarah graciously volunteered to rescue it from certain death by floodwaters.

On mange pas les haricots

Sundays, as they say here, are "top"! No need to wake up early. No ill-fated voyages to the post office (me to Sarah: "not one flat tire, but two! AND no package!"). No responsibilities. No pressure of any kind,* just a veritable lazy sunday.

To paint a picture: if we were of the colonial persuasion, Sundays would be spent on our shaded veranda wearing khakis, sipping a gin and tonic, and discussing the latest cricket scores in an absurd British accent. We don't have khakis and haven't made gin and tonic or discussed cricket; I make no comment on the veracity of that last claim.

A lazy Sunday indeed. For dinner, we "inviteéd" Baïssou and Robert to our favorite Chinese restaurant. We weren't sure if they would like the food... for how incredibly bland (and awful) some of the Malian staples are, anecdotal evidence suggested that many Malians really aren't interested in tasty food.**

However, much to our delight, both Robert and Baïssou absolutely loved the Chinese food. It was a bit of an adventure trying to teach them to use chopsticks, but they learned quickly as you can see in the picture below. We talked a bit about Malian politics; apparently there is an all-out strike today and tomorrow to get the President, "Son Excellence" ATT, to fire some incompetent ministers from his cabinet. Baïssou, it turns out, would really like to become a politician, perhaps first by becoming mayor of Niamakoro.

Altogether, another successful Sunday and start to a new week. Now we're just counting the days until Christmas!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Up to and including "no water pressure."
** Where "tasty" is defined as cuisine from pretty much any other country.
*** For those of you wondering about the title of this post... as part of the "joking cousins" system here in Mali, we must maintain that we do not eat beans (haricots). However, we do love the sautéed green beans at the chinese restaurant.

A few of my favorite things...

At the beginning of this week (and at various other times) I was complaining a lot about things here, so I made a mental list of some of the things I love about Mali/Bamako.

The Morning Call to Prayer: You might think that getting woken up at 4 in the morning would be on my list of things to complain about, but I think it is a beautiful sound and when I hear it I am reminded that I am somewhere I like to be.

Paté: Malian food is consistently a subject for complaining, but patés help make up for it. To clarify, I am not talking about liver paste, I am talking about delicious fried dough pockets filled with savory goodness. We have recently found a new paté lady who makes hers with large chunks of hard-boiled egg. We see her every day and this makes me happy. I also enjoy that when asking for paté (or any food) in Bambara you say: “six paté children.” No one can tell me why, but language is like that.

My name: One of the best parts of my day is still when I reach the place in Niamakoro where kids stop yelling “Toubababou!” and start yelling “Baya.” My Malian name is basically the reverse of my American one, Baya is a very uncommon first name and Traoré is an extremely common last name. The upside to Baya is that when people call random names at me on the street they never come up with the right one. The upside to Traoré is that it connects me to thousands of people, not only my fellow Traorés but also Diarras and Konés my.....

Joking Cousins: I have already explained this to many of you, but it remains a super awesome thing. When Soundiata Keita founded the empire of Mali, he laid down a series of laws called the Charte de Kouroukan Foukan . These laws included a system of “cousinage” intended to mitigate tensions amongst ethnic groups and families. The result of this is that now, whenever I meet a Diarra or a Koné, upon learning their name I must immediately begin insulting them. Common choices include: you eat beans, you are my donkey, or you are my slave (I generally try to to avoid this ones on the grounds of massive historical baggage). Apparently “Traoré” sounds like the Bambara phrase for “comes when called” leading Diarras to explain that I am their slave who comes when they call, or simply to ask “Who called you?”. I still have not learned the appropriate response to this, but I enjoy shouting “you eat so many beans” to Diarras I meet along the way.

Crossing the River: My favorite place in Bamako may be the middle of a bridge. To get from our neighborhood to downtown, or to come home again we get to cross the Niger river. I love the view off the bridge where you can see the biggest, most modern buildings in downtown Bamako and the fisherman in the same kind of pirogues (like canoes steered with poles) people have been using since before the French set foot in Mali. I hold out hope that one day I will see a hippo (Mali means hippo in Bambara) which would make the view even cooler.

People: I am almost always complaining about someone, but the people I meet are still the reason I love it here. People are, on the whole, overwhelmingly kind and generous. The kids at school, though often super frustrating, make my day when they draw me a creative picture, remember to greet me when they come in the door, or finally grasp how to construct an negative sentence in English. Our friends help us navigate everyday life, make us tea, and laugh with us (and sometimes at us). Tanti and Nene feed us, Fadima fills me in on the gossip, and Asu is still the cutest thing in the world. Somehow it is possible to be both constantly aware of all the ways we will never fit in and simultaneously feel like we belong.

Gunshots(?) from the Gaddafi High school?

We've recently been hearing what sound like gunshots, coming from the direction of the Muammar Gaddafi High School.

It turns out, New Year's fireworks start very early here. As for why the sounds were coming from Gaddafi's high school? Chalk it up to the coincidence that there are a lot of people living in the same direction, but conspiracy theories abound...

Happy early new year's, everybody!

Holiday Concert and Day on the Town

Another week gone, another week closer to Christmas! Yesterday, Sarah and I spent the afternoon in downtown Bamako on what could be considered our first "date" on the African continent. We had heard through the ex-pat listserv that there was going to be a holiday rendition of Handel's Messiah at the local branch of the Catholic Church. At some point I realized I had never heard this performed live, and so being a Classical music enthusiast, I piled into a rickety sotroma with Sarah and off we went to the Bamako Cathedral.

The Bamako Cathedral: one of many colonial landmarks.

Surprisingly, our sotroma ride was very pleasant. It wasn't crowded, and it even stayed on the right route. Typically, our luck runs out just before we cross the river, and we end up having to take a cab to get to where we're going. But, like clockwork, we arrived at the Cathedral 15 minutes early!

I'm not sure where our expectations/understanding of the event got mixed up; we had assumed it would be free and very low-key (who in their right mind would pay to see Handel's Messiah in a Cathedral with no organ?). Instead, we felt under-dressed, and the Cathedral was completely packed with primarily anglophone toubabs (white people), along with the occasional french or german family.

As for the music? It was put on by an English ex-pat choir. They were very earnest, and hats off to them for assembling a modest orchestra and choir in Bamako to do a holiday production of the Messiah. When they finished, the crowd was quick on their feet to give a standing ovation. Let's just say the bar for a standing ovation must be very low here; I was expecting the Hallelujah chorus to start only after the choir had stopped singing. But, as abysmal as it was, the concert was still very lovely and we had a fun time.

Afterwards, we took a short detour to the French Cultural Center, where there was a photography exhibit about the Malian Hunters, who play a large role in the Sundiata epic. Apparently our last name (Traoré) is a hunter name. There was also an artisan market out in front, where we purchased a very beautiful Tuareg creche (nativity scene). The man at the booth also threw in a free pair of earrings for Sarah, because he and I shared the same name.

The evening concluded with another visit to our favorite Bamako chinese restaurant, where we stuffed our faces with delicious chinese food. It always happens that our eyes are bigger than our stomaches, but true to tradition (Sam, Austin, Mark, you'd be proud!) we finished all of the food, hopped a return sotrama, and rather quickly collapsed into a food coma at our apartment. A lovely sunday, indeed.

The Gift of Books

We cannot believe it is already December. Watching the transformation of the library from a half-finished pile of cinderblocks to a bright space full of kids and books has been a remarkable adventure. This is not even to mention the adventures of trying to get running water (still not resolved), riding sotramas, and battling giant bugs and Nigerian scam artists. Tis officially the season for holiday giving, and I want to make a pitch that you consider us in your giving/gifting this holiday season.

Before...

After!

I know that many of you who read our blog(s) are not exactly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (though if Bill and/or Melinda happens to be reading this I hope you will get in touch), but a very small contribution can make a huge difference here at the library. We are not yet an official non-profit, but if you were considering giving us a personal Christmas or Hanukkah gift, please consider putting that money towards a gift that will give far more joy for five dollars than anything else I can think of.

There are a gazillion great organizations out there (seriously, if you aren't donating to us look up Heifer, Camfed, Oxfam, or MSF), so why should you give to us? Apart from the fact you (hopefully) like us, I believe this project stands on its own merits.

We are clearly filling a need. At 8:05am the last two Saturday mornings, the library was completely full and we had kids waiting outside the door. We open at 8:00am. During every available free hour of the day, kids come in to read comic books, study their French textbooks, and stare curiously at our world map. I think they also come to learn in a space where no one calls them “imbécile,” and where they are encouraged to ask questions and explore.

If you've been reading our project blog you've seen the dismaying statistics. Mali has the worst recorded adult literacy rate in the world, as well as the worst literacy rate amongst women. Less than 1 in 5 Malian women can read and write. A child's educational future is determined by tests given in a language which is not their own and which 9 years of teaching in overcrowded, under-resourced classes has not taught them. We are trying to change this horizon for our students, and I believe we will.

The best reasons to give, of course, are human ones. We have (at least) 450 really good reasons to give walking in and out of our library every week. This is about the 9th grade boy who spent 40 minutes with Harry Potter and the Dictionary to get through the first two paragraphs but keeps coming back for more. About the adorable kindergarteners who come up during their recess to turn pages in the picture books we read them during story time. About Moussa who comes to read painstakingly through the same picture book and has finally learned to read “va bientôt” by sounding it out. About Ousmane who wants to be a journalist, Aïchata who wants to be a doctor, and Balla who wants to be a soccer player and/or in the government. Not to get overdramatic, but this is about the future of this country and of our world. This is about undoing some small part of the massive injustice that prevents these kids from having the education that most of us enjoyed.

Ousmane

The ever-adorable kindergarteners

Moussa and his friend

We need more books and more art supplies and we need to be able to pay our staff a salary that will allow them to commit to the project as fully as they want to. We want more stories for the kindergarteners and hopefully the rest of the Harry Potter series once the student I mentioned gets through the first one. You can help us achieve these goals and add a little more learning and reading and fun and thinking to our students' lives. It really doesn't get any better than that. If you are interested in giving, check out the donations page on our website.

The new routine

           Since the library opened, daily life has shifted around quite a bit, so I thought I'd write a blog on my new routine.

             Monday-Saturday I get up a little before seven, get dressed, lament the lack of water in our apartment and head off to the library. When I walk to school my twenty minute trip takes me through the small streets of Niamakoro, highlighting how the neighborhood differs from our own and taking me past landmarks like the water tap, the turkey courtyard, the corner that smells like sour milk, and the street with the big mango trees. I see lots of kids going to school and grown ups going work, including the crowds of girls in black headed to the local medrasa. Once I get within three or four blocks of school, the ubiquitous chants of Toubabou, toubabou (white person, white person) change to kids calling out my name to say hello, which always brightens my morning.

          Mornings at school are taken up with teaching literacy activities to the elementary schoolers and English lessons to the middle schoolers, overseeing free hours with small groups of readers, preparing new lessons, adding the school's books to our catalogue, etc. I'm really enjoying the chance to interact with the kids and I feel like some of it at least has to be good preparation for having my own classroom next year. Afternoons are mostly free reading time and they tend to be a little crazy, with dozens of students showing up and often dozens more waiting outside the door. I'm getting really good at Bambara phrases like “wait,” “Put that book down!” “Where is your book?” etc. I still need to perfect “we don't hit people in the library.” 

          I get done around 4 each day and come home to lament the lack of running water, take a bucket shower, go to the cyber, and/or go hang out with our host family. I have been screening Disney movies on my computer at night which is a huge hit. Bebe Tene, the world's most sassy and forceful toddler has learned the word for computer and now says (in Bambara) “Take the computer out right now!” before bursting into hysterical giggles. She repeats this phrase until the computer is taken out or she is informed it isn't coming. Asu the wonder baby (as I call her )continues to do well, and has learned to say “Nene” (her mother's name)! I love her despite her tendency to slime me and seeing her is a highlight of my day. We usually go to bed after 11 because we wait up for the BBC to switch back to English to get our news.

         We also had a lovely break from the routine this weekend with our friends Stephanie and Pierce at a restaurant called Comme Chez Soi which is absolutely beautiful and totally worth the long and expensive (by Malian standards) cab ride. I ate chicken with polenta and Neal had steak with bleu cheese sauce. Quoi???

Bon Voyage Bakary

Especially given how little has changed since I was here in 2009, it is always a little disconcerting when something major changes. Our friend and friendly neighborhood cyber owner Boubacar/Bakary left for Ghana this morning. He is going to study English for 6 months so we won't see him again before we leave. Fortunately, we got to go on a lovely outing to the Parc National with him last weekend, which you can see the pictures of here.

Boubacar is an incredibly lovely and generous person (he informed us that he would make sure his employees keep giving us the ridiculously discounted rate on cyber time we enjoyed while he was here). Several of you have already met him as he introduced himself into a couple of Skype conversations we've had with our  families. He was also by far the most dedicated of my various English students and I hope some of what we studied will be of use to him in his Anglophone adventure. So this is just a little blog to say good luck, we'll miss you at the cyber and we hope we'll see you again soonish.

The First Thanksgiving

Sarah and I came to the realization last night that this was the first Thanksgiving we've spent together, despite coming up on six years of being a couple. And perhaps true to our relationship, Thanksgiving this year felt anything but "traditional".

The week leading up to National Turkey Day* was essentially split evenly between managing hoards of children come to read the books in the Niamakoro library and salivating over pictures of Thanksgiving food. Needless to say, the monotony of eating the same three dishes here for months on end has led to some indulgent food fantasies. Did you know there's such thing as food porn**? It's too bad we don't get those cable channels here.

Sarah did an english lesson about Thanksgiving with the 9th grade classes during their time in the library last week, which involved some searching for pictures of Thanksgiving food, football, and good-ole' American family gatherings. We were highly disturbed by Google's auto-suggest. An image search for "family thanksgiving" suggested we may really be interested in "black family thanksgiving". *Facepalm*. We quickly found some pictures demonstrating the ideal Nuclear Family, which were probably photocopied from a Health textbook.

Thanksgiving day itself was very pleasant. The day was spent working on the project, where the children are still overly excited and arriving in unmanageable numbers at the library (we've had to institute the rule that if there are no seats, you have to wait until someone leaves). Then, in the early evening we had some nice Skype conversations with our families. There's something to be said for modern communication technology -- the fact that you can video chat with someone literally half-way around the world, from a poor part of one of the most under-developed countries in the world, is truly incredible. But it was nice to talk to them all, even as we lamented the fact that the oven smells weren't making it through the 'tubes. They must've been clogged.

Then, following a tradition that dates back to as early as the Mayflower, we proceeded into downtown Bamako for a Thanksgiving dinner of Chinese food. We could've attended a (rather spendy) ex-pat dinner hosted by the American Club of Bamako, but decided there was a certain poetry to eating Chinese food for Thanksgiving. It just illustrates the day-to-day absurdity of living in a foreign country. But thankfully, it was a tasty absurdity which did not consist of beans. Here are the lovely pictures to remember our First Thanksgiving.

 

-------------------------------------------

* Little known fact: the reason we eat turkey on the last Thursday in November is to commemorate the wisdom of our Founding Fathers and give thanks to the fact that the Eagle, not the Turkey, is our national animal. Thanks, Ben Franklin, for almost screwing that one up :)

** From the New Oxford American Dictionary: porn (n) - ... (2) Television programs, books, etc., regarded as catering to a voyeuristic or obsessive interest in a specified subject : The Food Network captures a delectable display of exquisite cuisine -- food porn of the highest order.

The Library Has Finally Opened!

We've finally opened the library! With surprisingly little fanfare, we officially opened the doors last Tuesday to a school of overly-excited children. (I say "surprisingly little fanfare" because typically Son Excellence, Amadou Toumani Touré, President de la Republique et Chef de l'etat, is present at such events to cut ribbons and shake hands and give away presents to small children as he cures a new batch of lepers and turns water into wine for the reception afterwards. Or at least that's our impression from the state-run ORTM television station.)

If you're just looking for pictures of cute African children reading books, skip to the bottom ;)

Each class in our partner school, which runs from kindergarten to 9th grade, has a scheduled time to come to the library (or in the case of the larger classes, several different times for disjoint subsets of students). This first week Sarah and Robert introduced the library and talked about a few rules for its use (no running, no yelling, no fires taller than the bookshelves... your average common-sense library rules). Then, depending on the age of the students, they either had time to read and/or look at picture books, or Sarah read them some stories with Robert translating into Bambara.

If I've learned one thing about the education system here, it's that my expectations always turn out to be wrong. Of course it's hard to really form any "generalizations" after only being here for a few months and interacting with a rather limited subset of students, but I had expected hardly any of the children to know how to read. But once again, as we had our first students on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised as one of the girls at the table next to me was sounding out words quite well.

Talking with Sarah later, it seems there are a few things going on. First, while many of the students may be able to "read", many of them don't actually understand what they are reading. How can this be? I'm sure there are tomes written on this subject, but here are a few of our observations:

• French is not spoken at home, and French instruction in schools is decoupled from any sort of context. For example, our nephew Papa was practicing a dialogue the other night for his "Education Civique et Morale" class, which involved such lines as "I do not play on bridges" and "I obey my parents". It was clear, though, that he had no clue what he was saying. Sitting out in the courtyard at school, you can hear the little first graders repeating sentences to their Maîtresse, who stands at the front of the class holding nothing but a whip in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other. The walls are blank cinderblock, and students rarely have books.
• By 4th or 5th grade, students start speaking enough French to get by conversationally (this is the age of our niece Djamelou, for example). However, because (almost all) students in this neighborhood have no access to books, their French vocabulary is limited to the types of words that come up in a very narrow set of conversational circumstances. Thus, they don't know most of the words that appear on the pages they are reading.

That all said, the students' excitement to finally have access to books is incredible. They are particularly enthusiastic about the comic books and this set of "ImageDoc" magazines, which have articles about animals, nature, space, foreign countries, etc. and LOTS of pictures. The younger ones are content to thumb through the picture books (after all, we were told that "learning the alphabet" was a second-grade activity, so at this point individual reading isn't an option. We hope to change that.). The middle-school aged students, however, are pretty serious about trying to read. They'll sit in (almost) complete silence, and bring their book up to Robert to ask what words mean when they get stuck. One student was very intent on reading Harry Potter, although it took him almost a full 40 minutes to get through the first paragraph. Both Sarah and I really hope he sticks with it...

The moral of the story is, there is a lot of work to do. Even the students that can read are doing so far, far below what one would consider "grade level". But, with actual access to books and other literacy resources, hopefully these students will catch the bug and get hooked on reading. Already we're seeing a lot of kids come in during their free time, so things are looking promising. Now, to just keep up that momentum.

Nigerian Princess

(A note from our lawyers: The names herein have been changed to protect the identities of those involved. All references to places and events are real, and have not been altered. The following paragraphs represent the sole opinion of their author, and shall not be construed as an endorsement of Sarah Palin. By reading this sentence, you agree to our Terms and Conditions. This disclaimer is not intended to be a factual statement.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our friend Jean-Claude Chirac recently met the love of his life online. This should come as no surprise to those who have seen advertisements for online dating - it's a guarantee with a $49.99/month membership! This girl - call her Monique - sounded positively lovely. She didn't speak french, but as we've learned from like every romantic comedy, this no barrier to true love (or the masterful manipulation of Google Translate). I'm going to marry this woman, he informed us. It was a picture-perfect story, a veritable romance for the ages.

About a week and a half ago, Jean-Claude asked us to do him a favor. Monique was currently living in Senegal, he said, and had asked him to call her to talk on the phone! However, she apparently didn't have a cell phone herself; instead, we were to call her pastor (who also did not speak french), and he would pass the phone to her. The whole process seemed a little convoluted, but we've long since stopped trying to make sense of everything that happens here. Sarah called and got the pastor, who told us to call back in 45 minutes. Eventually we got Monique on the phone, and thus nurtured Jean-Claude's budding romance.

Everything seemed to be unfolding "most splendidly" (excuse the speech pattern, we've been listening to a lot of BBC radio recently), until we got a worried phone call from Jean-Claude at almost 11pm as we were preparing for bed. "Baya, I need to talk to you," he said, "I'm sitting outside Robert's Coiffure drinking tea." Sarah got dressed again and went down to find him, but we secretly feared the worst.

When Sarah came back, she explained the story to me. After several weeks of flirtatious courtship online, Monique had finally spilled her life story to Jean-Claude, the pain and emotion of her ordeal cutting through the emoticons and links to LOLCats. Although she is currently living in Senegal, she was not born there. She's actually a refugee from the Rwandan genocide, where she had to flee after her whole family was ruthlessly murdered. But, as luck would have it, her father had left 7.6 million pounds for her in an account with the Royal Bank of Scotland! She just needs someone (outside of Senegal) with a bank account to accept the transfer of money, which she cannot accept directly because of her refugee status.

Needless to say, we were ecstatic -- our friend had just hit the jackpot! With the 18% cut she promised him, Jean-Claude could easily live and support his family in extreme luxury for the rest of their lives. All he had to do was send his bank account information to M. Nelson Smith, a representative of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who could be reached at either of his official email addresses, rbscustomer_nelson@escite.co.uk or nelson_rbs@switched.com. Monique had already informed the bank that he would be writing them; all Jean-Claude had to do was send his bank information.

We immediately realized there was a major problem with this story. You see, Jean-Claude doesn't have a bank account! Aaaaaand, it's a scam literally straight out of the textbooks. We tried to convince Jean-Claude of this. He agreed it seemed a little odd, and didn't understand why she would want to steal from him when he doesn't really have any money to steal. Plus, I think he really wanted to hold on to a little hope that this woman he had fallen in love with, who he had a 98% match with on eHarmony.com, was in fact real.

Finally, Sarah googled the story Monique had fed him, and found several web sites exposing the scam. It's remarkable how things like this can destroy your faith in humanity. As Sarah wrote back to her in an email (sent with Jean-Claude's permission):

Monique, this is clearly a scam. I have looked it up on the internet and seen that the same thing has been done to hundreds of other people. Do not contact me again, and shame on you for using the horrible things that happened to people in Rwanda to try to steal people's money.

And thus concludes the story of how a Rwandan refugee turned out to be a Nigerian Princess. I didn't think these things actually happened to real people.

Abebi and Asu

As many of you who read this blog already know, we had a very sad event happen this week. My family said goodbye to our super-ancient, super-beloved, super-bizarre poodle Abebi. Such an event could never be well timed, but it happened to coincide this week with incompetence and interference on behalf of the principal at the school where we work, frustration with Malian friends and money, and the spectacularly ill-timed arrival of my somewhat insane host sister Toutou from Mopti. It also doesn't help that most Malians (with good reason) would look at me like I was absolutely insane if I explained to them that the reason for my pensiveness and frequent watery eyes was the death of my dog. In fact, in a country where 1 in 5 children don't make it to the age of five I feel a little guilty being sad over this. But I am very sad, and so would like to commemorate the dog Neal so aptly describes as “beautifully bizarre” in this blog.

Abebi, as some of you know, means “we asked for her and she came to us.” And ask for her we did. Actually, it was more of a sustained begging campaign on the part of Beth (my sister) and I that involved pleading, taking care of stuffed dogs, and reading every book in the elementary school library dog section and memorizing obscure facts about rare breeds (that last one was mostly me). When we finally got her, she was the cutest small, neurotic beast in the world. I distinctly remember her sitting between Beth and I on the back seat coming over the Fremont bridge taking her home. We briefly considered naming her Hannah (I think dad also suggested yellow-jacket-butt) which would have been far too ordinary a name for such a strange and wonderful creature.

In her earlier years Bebi endured a lot of schemes we/I designed to test her intelligence, agility, etc. Perhaps the most unusual of these was  the time I decided I would try to teach her to read with a series of flashcards I made. I did succeed in making her piddle when shown the “yellow” flashcard, but as anyone who knew young Abebi can tell you, she probably would have done that anyway. I'm still unclear as to how my years of dog research had not taught me that she was colorblind anyway.

What Abebi loved most of all (apart from cheese) was being outdoors with her family, rolling in disgusting-smelling things, chasing animals, and trotting along with her attractive bandanas. While people on the  trail would often exclaim “A hiking poodle!” with surprise and amusement, Abebi certainly never let her breeds reputation define her. The few times the groomer put bows in her hair, she ate them.

Her favorite place was probably our yurt, and she was with us from the pre-yurt camping trips (when she chased a deer so far I thought she'd never come back), to the first winter trip (when we all slept in our coats and her water bowl froze every night right next to the wood stove), to the later trips when she mostly dozed on her bed and trotted around.

She was always the strangest beast, Neal wanted me to add her adorable later habit of sprinting full speed around the kitchen every time she came in from outside before resuming behavior appropriate to a dog of her age. So I just wanted to say, rest in peace Abebi, you will always be the one and only staaanker.


On a much happier note, one of the main things getting me through this week (apart from Neal being lovely and a great outing for Chinese food with our friends Stephanie and Pierce), has been my fantastic niece Asu. Here she is making her, “you did NOT just do that/I will begin screaming now” face.

She is the new kid since I was here before and when I first arrived she cried every time she saw me. Once we made peace, we hung out quite a lot, but I've been consistently worried about her since we got here. She is apparently just over a year old (people were telling me her birthday was in December but actually it is apparently October), but she is quite small, almost never smiled, and usually seemed listless and uninterested in anything going on.

This week it is like she is a new baby. She smiles and giggles and toddles at speeds previously unknown. It is so amazing. Her only downside is that she is often alarmingly slimy and that, although I am so excited about her newfound appetite, her faster toddling speeds mean she is increasingly good at getting her tiny, germ-infested hands into our food before we can stop her. But thanks Asu, for making a crappy week a whole lot better.

Fête des Moutons (Festival of Sheep) 2011

Fête des Moutons (Festival of Sheep) 2011

After much hype and build up, Tabaski finally arrived on Sunday. Here follows the description of our somewhat epic day. It is really long, but it has plenty of pictures I promise. My sister Fadima called us at around 7:30 (she said she would call between 8 and 9, this is the first and only time she has ever done anything early) and told us to come over. We got ourselves all dressed up in our bazin, which elicited delighted exclamations from friends and strangers all day long, and headed over. In case you were worried, we did figure out how Neal's pants work, turns out the tailor puts a drawstring in the pocket…duh.

When we arrived, of course, the men, Na (my host mom), and Tanti (my aunt) were still at mosque, so we just hung out and started taking pictures of the excellent outfits that are such a big part of the day. Here are a couple of pictures. The first one shows our outfits in all of their glory, then Fadima striking a pose in her amazing bazin and her hair-do that she had to go downtown overnight to get done, and finally  Fadima (showing her personality) and I with our nieces Awa and Djamelou and our cousin Kafoune.

When everyone got home from mosque we took a few more pictures (below you can see Neal posing with Na), and then the sheep slaughter got under way.

For some unknown reason our sheep had been moved overnight from their former location in the courtyard to the roof, so they had to be led down the stairs to meet their doom. This is (sort of) visible in this picture of Issouf bringing sheep number 2 down. The less than excellent quality of the photo is due to the fact that I was hiding in the back corner of the courtyard to avoid seeing the slaughter itself. Despite my brother Madou's insistence that there were "plenty of sheep" and Neal could slaughter one if he wanted, we chose to opt out of that process. I think I managed to go the whole day without actually seeing a sheep get killed which was quite a feat seeing as there were A LOT of sheep getting slaughtered in Bamako and then they showed several slaughterings on TV throughout the day as well.

While Madou and Issouf finished up with the sheep, Neal, Fadima, Awa, Kafoune and I headed downtown to greet and bring food to my Grandma Baya. Our sotrama on the way there was relatively uncrowded, and the streets of the grand marché (big market) were strangely quiet. Grandma Baya was very happy to see us and we took a few pictures with her as well. I like the one we're showing here because it looks like Neal and our cousin could actually be related.

The sotrama on the way back was considerably more crowded (there was definitely not enough room for my hips in the spot the assistant put me in). Neal got to sit up front with the driver where it was apparently cool and comfortable and they gave him a banana. However, he did also get to see them starting the vehicle by touching two wires together.  My experience in the back of the sotrama causes me to lodge the following two complaints about basin: 1. It does NOT breathe well and 2. New basin is really slippery, so once I had enough room to actually sit I slid back and forth and into the laps of the poor people on either side of me.

When we got home, the meat was still being partitioned and the cooking was underway. Four sheep produces a lot of meat, and you can see Madou and our neighbor with their almost finished tubs below.

After our first meal of the day (surprisingly delicious sheep organs and onion sauce with bread) Neal took a nap and I helped grill the next round of meat with the women and children. See Fadima hamming it up with the BBQ below.

After eating the delicious grilled meat (I worked hard to insure we got the more well-done parts) we went home to take a nap. On the way we were drawn into having tea with some of the waiters from our favorite restaurant which was fun, although a bit beyond my Bambara skills (Neal says this is lies!).

Post nap, we returned to the family for yet more sheep eating and socializing. I went with Fadima to visit her friends who are hosting one of the SIT students so I got to chat with her while Fadima worked out her plans for later. In the evening, we joined the family for evening prayers. Neal got a very detailed lesson (more detailed than I ever got) in pre-prayer ablutions and it was a lovely community experience. Tanti wanted Neal to post a picture of me in my headscarf, so here it is.

This seems like a good moment to mention the religious significance of this holiday. It coincides with the end of Haj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca). Because the Haj absolves participants of all their sins, Tabaski is also a moment for forgiveness among Muslims at home. It also celebrates the broader Muslim community, so sharing (in this case of your sheep) is also an important part of the holiday. It commemorates when Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son to God (and then was allowed to sacrifice a sheep instead) and thereby also represents a renewal of each person's submission to God.

Ironically, given the major religious importance of the holiday, our day ended, as it does for most young Malians, at a bar. We went out with Baïssou and Robert to Baïssou's favorite spot, the Hotel CA (possibly an Eagles reference?). I'm not really sure how to describe the place. It is through a nondescript door which leads into a smoky, mostly enclosed long room of low tables that leads to a slightly larger room with a dance floor. The entire thing is decorated with a crazy assortment of Christmas lights. The music started off with Salsa, then moved to a long section of the mostly Ivoirian and Malian music that is particularly popular here, had a brief break of techno before going back to Malian standards. Here is a picture of our table, where you can see the absurd amount of Cokes that Baïssou foisted on me. He had very kindly decided to "inviter" Neal and I, which meant he insisted on paying for everything the entire night. Neal is not a fan of Malian beer, so we had to work almost as hard to get Baïssou to stop buying them as we did to keep him from having to slaughter a mouton.

We know how hard Baïssou works at odd jobs to help provide for his large extended family, so we will need to return the favor sometime soon. We danced some, and watched a lot of dancing. I decided my favorite dance move is the one where the Malian men hitch up the long shirt/robe on their boubous in order to move their legs more quickly. Everyone seemed to be having a great time and it made an excellent, if bizarre, end to our day.

Observations from the week

A list of random interesting, amusing, distressing, etc. things that have happened this week.

- The sheep that are now truly everywhere, on every street corner, in every courtyard, on top of many vehicles, make for plenty of amusing moments. Yesterday I saw the biggest sheep I have ever seen in my life it was quite literally the size of a donkey or a motorcycle. Everyone in the grin (tea circle) watched it go by in a way that reminded me a lot of how our friends at home watch a Ferrari or a Lamborghini.

- On a more upsetting note, one of our friends/friendly acquaintances appears to have gone missing. We realized over the last couple days that we hadn't seen Chapé, one of the guys who works at the tire “boutique” next to Robert's coiffure in almost a week. This would be strange for anyone since people here tend to be in the same area most of the time, but for Chapé it was particularly weird because he is normally the most dependably present of any of the usual characters. You could pretty much always find him reclined in his chair in his enormous Dior knock-off sunglasses supplying everyone in the area with tea and/or peanuts.

Normally when someone disappears in this manner it means he or she has gone to visit family, started university, gotten a job, gone to Mecca, etc and we as non-Bambara speakers just haven't caught on. Nobody seemed that worried, so I had kind of assumed Chapé's absence was of this nature. Unfortunately, when I asked about it last night Baïssou got a very worried look on his face and said no one has seen or heard from him in days and no one has any idea where he went. This is very uncharacteristic of him, and Baïssou thinks his boss needs to start checking the hospitals and police stations. The situation is most likely grave, but I hope we will see him again soon.

- To end on a lighter note, Baba and I both have our outfits for the fête, which you will get to experience in all their glory in the many pictures I'm sure we will post on Monday. There is just one small problem, which is that we don't understand (at all) how Baba's pants are supposed to work. We are quite sure this is not a tailoring mistake but, as with many things in Mali, there is clearly a trick we haven't figured out.

Tampon picture.

Ok, now I've got you reading. Below is a picture of the project's brand new stamp, or tampon (I'm not making this up: http://www.wordreference.com/fren/tampon). Comes complete with cheap camera and over-used photoshop filters.

Donc, regarde the sheep

This year's sheep have arrived at the family. Sorry for the awkward formatting...

A Lovely Sunday

We had a very interesting and lovely day today that seemed worthy of a blog post. Earlier this week, our friend Robert asked us if we would go to church with him on Sunday because he was helping to lead the service and he wanted to invite us. He informed us yesterday that service starts at 9 o'clock sharp and because he was participating in the service he needed to be there at 8:45. He called us at 8:55 this morning to come downstairs and meet him to walk to church, and off we went.

I had been to Robert's church once before when I was here in 2009 and it is pretty much as I remembered it. We walked over a nicely shaded portion of the stream that divides Kalaban Coura (our neighborhood) from Niamakoro an into an otherwise non-descript compound where the church is located. The structure itself is a corrugated metal roof with some ceiling fans on the inside with a smaller roof alongside where the children sit. The congregation is divided by gender, but of course Job seated us both on the men's side (to insure our proximity to a translator), which left me a bit confused during the hymns with different parts for men and women. Below is a picture of us with Robert in the choir section after church ended.

The music at the church is great, with lots of hymns in Bambara accompanied by drums. The lyrics are actually written down so we were able to follow along and participate. Reading the hymns and listening to the service gave me the chance to appreciate lots of fun linguistic things like the fact that God in Bambara is “Ala,” there by making matigi Yesu (Lord Jesus) Allah's son. Also, Christians and Muslims use different words for prayer, because apparently “seli” means the specific motions of Muslim prayer rather than the act of prayer itself. Anyway, after presenting ourselves to the congregation in Bambara we sang hymns, put money in the collection plate, prayed for various people and listened to announcements before all of the children suddenly got up and left and the sermon began.

Although the man sitting next to me had been reading from Leviticus all morning, when the preacher took the lectern everyone in the church, men and women alike got out their Bibles and notebooks. I wonder if anyone has ever studied the literacy rate among Christians in Mali, I would imagine it to be slightly higher than the abysmal national average. Christians are also much more likely to interact with written Bambara than other groups because of the effort various missionaries have made to translate hymns, the Bible, etc. Robert, who plays a variety of roles in the church including choir director and drummer, today also had the impressive task of translating the sermon line-by-line into Bambara as it was being given. Apparently the October sermon theme has been sin and repentence, and the preacher today continued to emphasize the fact that Christians who acted just like everyone else (aka Muslims) outside of church, and/or committed sins such as adultery and lying corrupted their relationship with Jesus which in turn prevented them (and their church) from achieving wealth both physically and spiritually. We were informed that Jesus had been “simple” (in French this refers to a simple life rather than a lack of intelligence), not poor, and that anyone who was right with Jesus would be able to achieve wealth for themselves, their family, and their church. The proof of this is that all of the world's richest countries are based on Judeo-Christian values. While I am all for truly trying to live in accordance with one's beliefs, and do not believe that God wants anyone to be destitute, I was somewhat disturbed by the idea that the wealth of the US and Europe was being held up as an example of the outcome of good Christian behavior. I am quite certain that every person in that church could be exemplary Christians and that (in large part due to events in the US and Europe) the vast majority of them would still be poor. I also was disturbed to hear the preacher repeatedly disparage the modest appearance of the church, as compared to the local mosques, as evidence of the congregants' spiritual failings. The God I believe in would love to come to a place where people gather to celebrate their faith in community and with great hymns.

Anyway, after church we greeted everyone in the courtyard and then went to Robert's family's house to greet his parents. The Berthé compound is a very simple place, with an outdoor kitchen, a hutch for the rabbits, a coop for the chickens, a latrine for each gender and 3 or 4 rooms, where everyone is extremely generous and great. While we waited for the mid-day meal to be ready we had tea with three of Robert's older friends: a doctor, a post-law student who wants to run an arts school or study international relations, and a physicist. In response to their very pointed questions, I attempted to explain NATO policy in Libya, defend my opinion of Qaddafi, predict Obama's chances in the next election, explain the points of tension between the federal and state governments in the US, etc. It was exhausting.

Back a the Berthé compound, we ate a very tasty lunch (see picture below) followed up with watermelon and papaya (Neal was overjoyed), did children's puzzles with Job, chatted with Robert and his parents, and otherwise enjoyed a very pleasant afternoon. Now we are back at the apartment resting and preparing to go to the cyber. It has been the kind of day that makes us really happy to be here meeting these wonderful people.

Fatim

We have caved in and hired a maid. Our friends have been suggesting it for a while, casting what they imagined to be subtle aspersions on my housekeeping ability. We actually had no intention of taking on a maid, but on Friday as we were talking with increasing dread of the “big clean” we were planning on doing the next day, one more or less came to us. Robert came back upstairs from getting the energy company people to turn our water on at least until after the fête (the rest of that bill has apparently still not been paid and our apartment manager/nemesis Touré has gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca and is therefore unreachable) to ask us if we would consider taking on the maid he had just found on the stairs.

To explain: as far as we know, Fatim's story goes like this. She was working for and living with the Nigerians who live down the street for about 20 days when she washed two bowls that belonged to someone else. Her employers then threw her and all of her possessions out, giving her 1000 CFA (a little over 2 dollars) for her trouble. Her parents live in a village on the outskirts of Bamako and she needed to find more work, so she came to sleep in the stairwell of our building.

Maids in Bamako have it notoriously rough. They are almost all illiterate girls from poor village families who are entirely dependent on the families they work for for food, shelter, protection, etc. Sexual assault is a huge problem, and (given the fact most Malians think all Nigerians are scum), our friends seem pretty certain this is what happened to Fatim.

We decided to hire her to come clean our apartment (minus our bedroom) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. She did a wonderful job on Friday and she is very nice. I am surprised at how uncomfortable I find it being a white expat in Africa with local house help with whom we can have only limited communication. There is just a whole lot of historical baggage that goes with the situation that you can't really shake out. There is also the problem that Fatim is still sleeping on our stairs. She doesn't sleep there at night (I don't know what she does at night), but every morning she must come in when our neighbors open the downstairs door and she spreads out her blanket and sleeps. This makes me uncomfortable, mostly because I want to know that she has somewhere safe to sleep at night, but I don't know how to address the issue. We didn't hire her as a live-in maid and the way our locks work there isn't a safe way for her to sleep on our porch without giving her keys, which would be a bad idea. However, when I explained this to our friends they said “You can always fire her and get another maid.” I like Fatim, and I would like to think that we can provide her with a little money for relatively easy work without any threat of harassment, however she can't keep sleeping in our stairwell. On the other hand, I really don't want to kick her out without being sure she has somewhere to go.

Robert said today he would ask her if she wants to work for his family in Niamakoro part-time and sleep there where she could share a room with his younger sister. I really hope she takes him up on the offer.

This slightly embarrassing...

As Sarah mentioned in a previous post, the front lines in Bamako have shifted from battling our land lord to fighting the continual bug infestation. After full-comboing the first couple of levels in what feels like a video game cross between whack-a-mole and the movie Alien, we finally encountered the boss: a 4-foot tall cockroach-looking beast with big antennae and pincers the size of your head.

Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating slightly; my excuse is fever-induced hallucinations. It was a dark and "foggy" night, and I was cooped up sick in bed watching a movie while Sarah was out giving an english lesson to her host sister. The apartment was quiet, and the haze cut by a creepy shimmer of the moon. I got up to use the bathroom, and found myself stared down by the Creature.

Enough dramatization. I tried to kill it, but it scurried awfully fast. It looked a lot like a cockroach, but wasn't exactly... not knowing if it was poisonous or not, I decided to wait until Sarah got back before attempting further action.

When she returned, we sealed the bedroom from potential infestation and gathered our weapons to do battle. I had seen the Creature crawl under our water/oil jug ("bidon" au français) at the end of my previous assault, so I tipped the jug slightly to entice it back out. However, this only succeeded in wounding it; when I lifted the bidon to check, it was half squished, making the job easy to finish. Sarah meanwhile stood by as backup:

Below is post-mortem photographic evidence. There was a lot of internal debate about whether we should return the body to the family; Neal in favor, Sarah pointing out we didn't want to discover that the family was in our house. In the end, we took our cue from the Libyan transitional government and disposed of the body in the middle of the night after taking this gruesome picture.

Welcome to life without the EPA

Weather report from London, 1859: "Doth the budding clouds of May, bring rain to make the colors of spring? / Alas, [don't] take a gasp, the rain is laced with acid." -- Walt Whitman

Los Angeles "The Smog City" California is certainly being given a run for its money. The last several days here have been awful in terms of air quality (see picture below), which I'm sure is a combination of poor environmental regulations (i.e., cars and trucks that would never pass DEQ in the US), the widespread use of wood fires for cooking, and an unsettling quantity of dust (pun intended). It's too hot to sleep with the windows closed at night, but when we wake up in the morning, walking out to the bathroom leaves footprints in the dust that has collected in the hallway since we swept the day before.

Sarah and I both came down with some sort of flu-like virus last week, but our friends all informed us that everyone gets sick at this time of year. Interestingly, no one is interested in hearing any sort of infectious diseases explanation; instead, they want to attribute our sickness to a variety of environmental causes. For example, the "foggy weather" we've been having is common just before cold season, and the change in weather gives people colds. As Sarah pointed out, it seems more likely than not that the "colds" are just mistaken for (perhaps more serious) upper-respiratory complications from the air pollution. Other explanations we've heard: "Baba just isn't used to the food here" (this time around, I had no stomach complaints, just a perpetual fever/headache); "Maybe the tea made you sick?" (no, probably not, we've been drinking tea our entire time here); "It's because you drink too much soda" (well, an acceptable risk! Coke tastes better out of a bottle...). However, I think the best explanation came from Sarah's father, the good doctor Martin Smilkstein, as interpreted by her host-aunt Tanti: we've been drinking too much water. Yes, you heard it here first -- 4 out of 5 doctors agree that drinking fluids while sick can only prolong your illness. We're not quite sure how Tanti came up with this explanation, let alone be convinced it came from Sarah's father, but alas; the city has shut off the water to our neighborhood once again, and we are feeling better! Coincidence? I think not.

Tabaski is Coming!

We apologize for our writing hiatus. I came down with a nasty bug which gave me extreme nostalgie for orange juice and chicken noodle soup and now Neal seems to have picked up a (thankfully less fever-inducing) version of it.

I promised a sheep update, so here it is. This year, Tabaski (officially Eid al Adha) will fall on November 6th.  On Tabaski, every Muslim family sacrifices a sheep in commemoration of when Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, but God had him kill a sheep instead. This means that almost every family in Bamako needs at least one sheep, which leads to some pretty amusing sights in the weeks leading up to the fête. The Fulani, an ethnic group known for their herding, descend on Bamako with A LOT of sheep. On a side note, some of our Fulani neighbors (they live in Bamako year round) have started trying to make me learn Fula greetings, which is not helping my language confusion. Anyway, all of the sudden there are small herds of sheep everywhere, shepherds walking through the neighborhoods looking for takers. The larger and more attractive the sheep the more expensive it is, so most herds contain an impressive range of sheep sizes. Sheep can get really expensive (up in to hundreds and even thousands of dollars) so most banks offer special Tabaski loans to help you pay for your sheep, advertised with nice posters and billboards with very impressive looking giant, clean, white rams on them. Based on what I've learned about Malian banks I shudder to think about the loan conditions.

Then, people start taking sheep home. Last week I passed several sheep on top of a bus headed out into Mali's regions, presumably accompanying family members who work in Bamako going home for the holiday. Keep in mind these are live sheep, on a luggage rack. It's approximately equal parts hilarious and horrible. Yesterday I saw this year's first example of two guys on a moto with a giant sheep upside down on the passenger's lap between him and the driver. Our family hasn't gotten a sheep yet, but I think I heard my host mom talking about it this morning. We're on high alert to make sure they aren't planning on having Baba slaughter the sheep (they keep talking about taking him to mosque, which is the prerequisite for sheep killing), a huge honor which he doesn't really want. Unfortunately we haven't gotten any good sheep pictures this year, but here is shot of my family's mouton from 2009, along with my cousin Issouf. He (the sheep, not Issouf) was charming and also quite delicious.

The other most important part of Tabaski is, of course, the clothes. Our fabric has been purchased and dyed. It looks very nice, though everyone says Neal's is prettier than mine for some reason. My host mom took his measurements last night and is taking the fabric to the tailor as we speak, I am going to woman tailor this evening with Fadima for what is sure to be a semi-hellish ordeal leading to a beautiful garment. Prepare yourselves for pictures.