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.

Nostalgie

To say they miss something here, people usually say “J'ai la nostalgie de....” (I have the nostalgia of....) or “….. nyenafin be n na” in Bambara. I've been thinking about things I miss while I'm here, hence this blog post. It's funny because a lot of what I miss seems so foreign to our current life here that I can't really imagine having it. Food is probably the best example of this. The other day I had a strange craving for a Triscuit*, and Neal mentioned our favorite breakfast place the Tin Shed, which sounds delicious, but I can't actually imagine being bundled up in a sweater digging in to a plate of my favorite gravy smothered things, so it is almost like I don't miss it at all. I've been feeling a little under the weather today, and my sore throat did get me thinking about orange juice (and Trader Joe's) in a highly nostalgic way. Of course, I can't imagine being in a Trader Joe's either, the AZAR supermarket here nearly undid me and its selection is definitely more limited than the average TJs.

What I really miss, as is always the case, are people. I miss my family, as I always do when I'm away from them, and my/our wonderful friends. I came to the sudden realization at a bit of a emotional low point the other day that I spend 95% of time with men, small children, and Malian women who are either much older than I or teenagers. Add to that how hard it is to connect in a real way with Malian women because of the language barrier and the fact that we spend our days doing entirely different things, and the limited but lovely time I spend with Stephanie and the SIT girls and I really miss my amazing, intelligent female friends. I think four years of living with you in college and coming home to hang out with another amazing group of women spoiled me.

Another weird kind of “nostalgie” I feel here is a sort of preemptive missing of things here while they're still happening. Having left the people and places I love here once before, when I'm in a certain kind of mood, everything develops a sort of bittersweetness. This feeling always gets me thinking about Baba, my host dad. My sister Fadima and I talk about him often, I think because generally people here do not talk too much about those who have passed away and so she doesn't often get the chance. Even though I am already used to the “new normal” of the house without Baba, I still notice his absence often. I have taken over his usual role of helping my little niece's with their work, now it is Issouf or Fadima who changes the channel when there is too much kissing on the soap operas, and now I talk about the news with Neal or Voldo. I miss him.

Lest any one be concerned, I am not usually in a state of nostalgie, and am still having a great time. Most hours of most days I am very optimistic, but I think the occasional bout of nostalgie reminds me of what is good in various parts of my life.

* Neal insisted that one and a half biscuits is in fact equivalent to a Triscuit.... which while amusing, did not get me a Triscuit.

USA is called country of “melting pot.”

The title of this post comes from one of my sister Fadima's classmates' interpretation of their English text on “Immigration in the USA.” The text itself was boring, wildly inaccurate and completely irrelevant to Malian students' lives and included gems like “some immigrants came to America to get rich, other were brought and sold. (slaves),” but it capped off a couple days in which I had been spending even more time than usual talking about the US with Malians, which is always a very interesting experience.

If Obama, or indeed any American politician, wants to feel good about him/herself and our country's image abroad, he/she should have a chat with Malians. The US is still wildly popular here (even more so since Obama's election) and despite the Muslim supermajority and the US' role in propping up the Malian dictator Moussa Traoré (no relation) back in the day, America is still pretty much the promised land. We talk about the US just about every day, either describing our own home or answering our friends' questions or both. Sheik says there are two cities in the US that interest him, Las Vegas and Hollywood. Our rapper friends ask about how easy it is to get a music contract. And everyone agrees that America is beautiful, everyone is welcome there, and no one is racist. In a somewhat in-depth conversation with Robert two days ago, he explained that he though America was a blessed country because it says “In God we trust” on our money and therefore every time you spend a dollar you are blessing someone. (If anyone I took radical theory with is reading this, you must know I pictured all of your reactions to these statements).

All of this leads to the interesting question of how to respond to these statements. They tend to be followed with “n'est-ce pas?” (right?) so my confirmation is required. For example: no one in America is racist and it is easy to move there...n'est-ce pas?” I don't enjoy badmouthing my country and I don't want people to get the impression I hate America, because I don't. I'm actually proud to be an American and treasure my blue passport, but explaining the relationship between that statement and my serious issues with many MANY things about the country is difficult even in English. Plus, it's kind of hard to tell a Malian I think the American government is dysfunctional because, frankly, my issues with the government add up to what we affectionately term “first world problems.” This doesn't mean that I'm going to change my mind about partisan bickering or the much larger issues of race, class, gender, etc facing Americans, or think of them as any less important, they just can't easily enter into these conversations. Also, I have to remember that in the “not racist” category we're largely being compared with France, which explains a lot. So what I wind up doing really depends on who I'm talking to. I tell Sheik about LA and Vegas and joke with him that he'd lose all his money if he hit the casinos. I tell our rapper buddies that it is definitely hard to get a music contract, but sure if they ever come to America we can go clubbing in LA. But when I talk to Robert and Baïssou about serious things I try to explain how I feel about being from a country that exports MTV and the effects of cotton subsidies that keep Malian farmers teetering on the brink of catastrophe, but that it is also founded on ideals that I believe are hugely important. The problem, really, is that if you really believe that all [people] are created equal, you have to believe that extends across all boundaries of race, class, gender and nationality. This is, of course, universalist and therefore open to all kinds of problems, but it is one of the great ideas. Therefore, I will wear my Obama pagne with pride and keep explaining to people that rap videos do NOT represent the lives of most African Americans.

In which Baba gets coiffed.

Our friend Job seemed pleased to inform me this afternoon that "Baba est devenu un vrai malien" (Baba has become a real Malian). I'm not entirely clear on all the criteria, but apparently getting an African-style haircut was the last on the list.

My hair had in fact become rather long. The children in Sarah's host family seemed rather impressed, occasionally tugging at the ends and asking innocently, "where does your weave attach?!" However, the temperature here has not dropped below 90 in like a bazillion days and so it was time to cut it all off.

Our friend Robert, who is working with us on the education project, owns and runs a small barber shop called "R. Kelly Coiffure," named after his favorite singer, the honorable R. Kelly. (Sarah has tried to explain to him that R. Kelly is in fact a terrible person, but alas you cannot argue with R&B.) I'm not sure if this is a pan-african phenomenon, but there are "coiffure" shacks literally every two or three blocks in Bamako. Robert seems to run quite a popular one, as most evenings there is a line for his services. Unfortunately this often disrupts the timeliness of our tea drinking, but ah well c'est la vie.

Speaking of tea, I've been practicing the whole tea-making process recently. I still struggle to produce adequate "mousse" (or bubbles), but on the whole I'm soliciting fewer laughs than before. This last time I was even allowed to finish without one of our friends taking over momentarily, afraid that the tea was too hot for my fingers. Toubabs (white people) apparently have the reputation of being exceedingly fragile...

Anyways, my hair is now much shorter, and it is pleasantly cooler -- partially due to the hair cut, and partially due to a small rain shower this afternoon. We're still battling water outages, and I got a small intestinal bug this past week, but on the whole we are doing quite splendidly. As Austin would say, this is clutch!

 

As an aside, I may have come up with an excellent Fermi problem to estimate the male population of Bamako. Because literally every man here has the same shaved-head haircut, you could probably get a decent count based on the number of coiffure shacks, their average daily business, and the average time between needing a haircut.

Notes on Everyday Life

The apartment now has pretty much all of the basics (if you don't look in the living room which is completely bare, but sitting outside is much nicer anyway). We will finally putting up some pictures soon so you can see what it looks like. Cleaning the apartment is quite the operation, dust gets in more quickly and in larger quantities than seems possible so we are constantly in need of sweeping with our hand brooms. Mopping is an even larger task, but even if we sweep every day, which doesn't always happen, we have to mop at least the porch once a week or so. All of this is compounded by the bane of our existence, “coupures d'eau” (water outages) which have occurred everyday for almost a week. We joke that this is the work of our nemesis/apartment manager Mr. Touré, but it is actually a regular feature of the EDM (Énergie du Mali) water grid. We've also had one power outage, but that was short-lived and less annoying. To prepare for the coupures we always keep the bucket in our bathroom full and have recently obtained our very own “bidon,” one of the large oil jugs (we have been assured it was thoroughly cleaned) for extra water storage.

Otherwise, we both fasted for Yom Kippur last Saturday (Neal decided that since we're telling everyone he's Jewish anyway he might as well give it a shot). It was quite challenging going without water for a whole day in high 90 degree temperatures, but we pretty much followed our friends' Ramadan model of sleeping a lot and moving very little. We went to Amandine (another transit adventure) to break fast and happened upon a bunch of the SIT girls so we got a little bit of extra toubab time, which was nice. We committed the annual mistake of eating/drinking way too much and still managing to have over-ordered, but it was a nice evening. We joked it would be quite ironic if the first thing that made us sick in Mali was pizza, but we survived our stomachaches without major incident.

Our day-to-day life continues pretty much the same, we work at home in the morning, eat lunch either with the host family or at Caravane (affectionately known to Fanta as the terrorist establishment), spend the afternoon napping and hanging out with the grin having tea, have dinner and give English lessons at the host family's and then drink more tea. The ever changing cast of characters at the grin makes things interesting, as does the constantly shifting tone of conversation. Yesterday Neal was back here napping and I was with the grin when suddenly things started to get very heated. People were standing up and shaking fists in each-other's faces. Our friend Sheik often gets heated in this way while recounting what he did yesterday, but even normally calm Robert was getting into it, so I was curious. The conversation was all in Bambara so I had to ask Robert what was going on. He explained that there had been an incident where 5 cadets had died during an army training and that 24 officers had been dismissed for their role. Half the grin (Robert's side) felt that this was completely reasonable because 5 deaths was excessive and murder must be punished. The other half (Sheik's side) felt that the officers had only been dismissed because one of the dead soldiers was Senegalese, and that this was unreasonable because it had been an accident, if at least one person doesn't die it isn't a good training, and 24 dismissed officers could easily form a rebellion. Once my interest registered, both camps began trying to recruit me. I often forget how tall the grin is on average but between Robert who is easily at least 6'3”, Sheik who is built like a linebacker, and Voldo who is tiny but gesticulates with the best of them, I was suddenly quite overwhelmed. I left to go deliver a snack to Neal and when I came back the conversation was still going, but had calmed down quite a bit. While I generally think no one should be dying during army trainings and thus sided with Robert on this one, I had to admit that the concern over a small group of well trained soldiers pissed at the government was worth considering.

Basically, we learn something new (or about a hundred things) every day and eagerly await the arrival of cold season. One other note, when I passed the big vacant areas by Rte de l'Aéroport yesterday I saw a couple small herds of sheep....Tabaski is on its way! (More on that later).

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories just might represent a truly universal cultural phenomenon. Luckily for us in the digital age, we have a trove of reliable information and groups of concerned citizens who are dedicated to ensuring the truth becomes known.

Yet despite these good-Samaritan watchdogs and our mind-numbingly easy access to information, we do love ourselves a good conspiracy. Below is a sampling of the conspiracy theories we have heard from people in Mali.

Neil Armstrong and Pink Eye

John F. Kennedy would've been more cautious about sending people to the moon if he knew about the diseases one could contract there. Apparently, pink eye made a debut somewhere in Africa at about the same time as the Apollo 11 moon landing. The first axiom of Conspiracy Theory tells us that correlation always implies causation, hence the lunar pink eye epidemic that plagues us to this day. Of course, there are also those who would argue that pink eye must've originated somewhere on a hollywood movie set resembling the lunar landscape....

Sarkozy, Gaddafi, and his Harem

With the recent events in Libya, there has been a lot of talk around here about the Ex-Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Mali has had an odd relationship with the estranged Libyan leader; some people hate him (for a variety of reasons -- he's a bad muslim, he stayed in power too long, etc.), while others feel he has done more for Mali than the current president Amadou Toumani Touré. (For example, Gaddafi has built numerous schools, clinics, and hotels in Bamako, and despite his overt racism towards black Africans, people still seem to like him.)

Anyways, back to Libya. Although the Libyan uprising might seem organic and home-grown to those in the western media, there are actually more sinister forces at work. You see, it turns out that Gaddafi financed the election of French President Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007. With Sarkozy in danger of losing the next election, he would be unable to repay his loan from Gaddafi. To protect himself from impending bankruptcy, Sarkozy had no choice but to overthrow the Libyan dictator.

You certainly learn something new every day.

Random Observations on Insects, Families, Akon, etc...

Now that we finally have water (I am so happy every time I take a shower it is ridiculous), the new battle in our apartment (and sometimes out of it) is insects. I feel like every traveler's account of Africa discusses our little many-legged friends, so here is my contribution. Our weirdest encounter thus far has been with what appeared to be, at first glance, a fuzzy black caterpillar like a wooly bear at home. It had wandered in when we had our doors open at night for ventilation. When Neal scooped it up to escort it out of the apartment however, long threatening looking spikes emerged from the fur...freaky. Our more everyday visitors are flies, mosquitos, and ants. I would like to lodge a complaint with the powers that be that it is extraordinarily unfair that bugs enjoy biting/stinging me more than those around me. I currently have a lovely collection of new mosquito bites, obtained while washing underwear the other night, including some in highly unfortunate locations. In addition, I have been stung 3 times by weird flying ant/wasp things, which hurt a lot. Neal has not gotten any bites...or stings...arg. To clarify, I don't want him to be attacked by bugs, I just think it is unfair that the bugs single me out.  Today I went into the apartment to get my phone and noticed that a huge column of the tiny little ants was moving from our living room into an empty cabinet under our kitchen sink. There is something so business-like and impressive about social ant activities that I felt bad sweeping them out of the place. However, if they had gotten into the Luna bars I might have killed someone.

On the subject of families, I am finding it a bizarre exercise in life to be simultaneously returning to my place in my host family and building an independent family with Neal/Baba. I think starting to see yourself as part of a new family-unit is weird in general, but it is complicated by never being quite sure what my familial obligations are to my Malian family. For example, Neal and I were feeling quite pleased with ourselves because we had finally bought some things for the apartment, among them some plates and silverware. When Fadima found out about this she was highly offended and told on me to Na, my host mother (low blow, Na is so scary), who was also offended and proceeded to tell me quite firmly that I was supposed to ask for everything I needed because this was my family, and hadn't she told me this before??? I didn't know how to explain that to us, the fact that the family is already feeding us at least once a day and doing all of our laundry feels like an unfair imposition on them, so I just apologized and asked for a knife. Now we have a truly motley collection of dishes, since Na gave us several mugs, a couple saucers, and a water cooler, but still no knife. This particular matter of confusion comes down to remembering the centrality of generosity as a virtue in Malian life. Giving stuff away makes you a good person, not providing for your family (even your relatively wealthy toubab family) is a disgrace. Meanwhile, I also struggle with the fact that privacy, at least as we typically think about it, is not highly valued. Some of this is practical, there are just a lot of people in a Malian house and it is hard to get time alone. But the desire to have time alone is in itself considered strange, and by some even a sign of witchcraft. This means that Neal and I have to rely on those trusty excuses "We're tired" or "I have a stomachache" in order to escape to find time to sweep the apartment or bathe. Unfortunately, using these excuses does not help us in our quest to be seen as something other than extremely fragile. Once at home, the door has to be kept locked if we don't want Job, Neal's basketball-playing friend, popping in to say hello. Fortunately people now seem to be accepting our strange habit of wanting to work on our computers in the morning and mostly leave us alone during that time. On a total side note, we paid our first electric bill this week, right around 3 dollars.

Finally, a moment of extreme cultural dissonance from our adventures yesterday. We made a trip to Azar, the big supermarket in Badalabougou to see what sort of Western food we might want in our apartment where we can't cook anything. There is nothing more confusing than hopping out of a sotrama and walking in to an air conditioned supermarket with a clean, shiny meat counter. I felt like I was going to start hyperventilating. We picked up some toilet paper and tissues, a thing of nutella, and an electric kettle which Neal was able to use to make Nescafé this morning although he did trip the breaker several times in the process. As if this store, full of wealthy Malians, Europeans of various stripes and some Arab families wasn't weird enough, as I was standing in the school supplies area the Akon/Lonely Island song "I Just Had Sex" came blasting over the overhead sound system. Say what??

La pelouse n'est pas interdit.

A sarcastic commentary on French vs. Malian culture: apparently Malians detest the French and their way of life enough to let us walk on the grass at the Malian National Park in downtown Bamako. This would never be permitted in Paris; along with the inalienable right to go on strike, one simply "does not walk on the grass" in Parisian parks. I wasn't quite sure what to expect in terms of French/Malian relations post-colonization, but there certainly seems to be a tangible animosity towards the French.  A few days ago while crossing the street, some guy on a motorcycle yelled what I assume was a derogatory slur at me, although the only word I caught was "Sarkozy." On the flip side, everyone is extremely excited to learn you are from the US, and even more excited when they learn you are an Obama supporter! Yet despite this animosity towards the French, there are definitely several cultural holdouts here from the days of colonization. For example, there are plenty of boulangeries in our neighborhood, and all of the soutrama/bus drivers were on grève (strike) last weekend over a proposed change to the bus routes. Ç'est la vie.

Let me back up a moment and explain our outing last weekend, which might aptly be entitled "Exploring Bamako: a study in cognitive dissonance". Our friend Baissu suggested we make a trip to the newly-redesigned Parc National du Mali. The takeaway message: damn. It's situated near the National Museum at the base of the hill where (Malian President) ATT lives, and in a different country it might rival the Huntington Gardens of Pasadena or Buchart Gardens of British Columbia. Everything is extraordinarily green and well-kept, and trash even finds its way into trash cans. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. (As an aside, one local custom I've found it particularly hard to adjust to is the habit of throwing trash on the ground, aka littering. As a bona fide pacific north-westerner, I'm often appalled by the lack of recycling bins in major cities around the US, and so you can imagine how hard it is to toss garbage into the bushes or a nicely compostable banana peel out the window of a Soutrama!)

Anyways, we had a perfectly lovely time, but everything seemed oddly out of place coming from the neighborhood where we've been living. The park had some nice re-creations of various famous buildings in Mali (such as the mud mosque in Djene or the mosque in Timbuktu), a few fountains, an interesting medicinal herb garden, a gym, and a rather upscale restaurant. There was a nice network of paths for walking, or in the case of the children from a (possibly French?) expat family, riding bikes/skateboarding. The demographic we saw there was definitely slanted towards wealthy Malians and expats, young couples, and families with visiting relatives. The weather was gorgeous, and all-in-all it was a very relaxing afternoon. Oh, and of course, you could walk on the grass too :)