my first month at site

I have received a lot of complaints/comments about not updating my blog more often. I'm sorry; I really do have such limited internet access, and then when I get on-line I have so many e-mails to reply to. Anyway, I have also noticed that perhaps the single biggest difference in my personality since being here is that I seem to feel very little urgency. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year . . . . . most of my hurry is gone.
Anyway, I have been at my site for about a month now. People say the first three months are really hard, so I was a little bit nervous about what to expect, but so far everything has gone really well.
I have a new name in my town, Maimuna Traore. On the suggestion of an English speaking friend I made, I am trying to go by Mai. My Bambara is still coming along, slowly but surely. The first few weeks at site it was definately a lot harder because I think they speak a slightly different dialect of Bambara there than in my homestay village. Even though its coming along, and I can usually eventually make myself understood and understand (with the help of French words, some people's limited knowledge of English, and a lot of gesturing and trying to say things different ways), as I told Katlyn, "With a vastly different culture and different language, there is a lot I don't understand".
As I referenced before, I did make a friend in my town, Adama, who studied English at university, so he has been a huge help. I ask him different cultural questions all the time, and he was able to translate some things that my family was trying to tell me. He helped me have a kitchen table made, and has been able to introduce me to different people in the community that I wanted to be introduced to. Once we became friends and he and I started hanging out in the afternoons, (he is happy to have someone to practice his English with, and I am of course happy to have someone to answer my bazillion questions and to SPEAK English with) I realized that sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
He translated some things to me that people were saying and that my head mother in particular was saying, and I was taken aback. Wait, allow me to digress and explain more about my family.
Polygamy is common in Mali. It turns out that I technically had two mothers in my host family at homestay, but I was never aware of it because the first wife was old and sick and lives in Bamako. At my site, in my host family I have three mothers. I don't know how much truth there is to it, but people tell me that traditionally the first wife is/was, an arranged marriage and that the second wife is the quote on quote love marriage. I don't know what people say about the third and the fourth . . . . four is the maximum amount of wives a man can have.
I have three mothers and as I was told on my first day there, "She is the chief". The different women each have their own sleeping area, kind of like a house? Its the same arrangement I have, I'm not sure what to call it. Its not a hut, its probably more of a shack, but shack just has such a bad connotation that I'm hesitant to refer to it as that. Anyway, its essentially two rooms, which I can close off and lock from the outside. Each of my mothers' has one, and my father does too. They're all part of a "concession". I also have a hangar type thing outside of my door for shade.
Its hard to get an exact count on the amount of children and other people in the concession . . . . its always fluctuating. Their relationships are also hard to make out, partly because Malians tend to not distinguish as strongly between different relationships/use family expressions very casually, and partly because it is hard for me to understand how people have their children living with other people, but it is normal here. To further clarify, a person might not distinguish between a cousin and a sibling. They might also call a woman on the street, of which they are loosely acquainted, "koromuso" or "grand soeur", older sister, in Bambara and French respectively. They may also just call a random child, daughter or son, in Bambara, which I have also caught myself doing now . . . . And as my sister asked me the other day when doing morning greetings, "how are your children?" (translated from Bambara), and I replied I have no children, my mother then motioned to all the host children and scolded me and said these are your children too.
I had kind of noticed that different children seemed to come and go that weren't actually people's children in the concession, but then Adama or perhaps Adama's English speaking friend from a neighboring village, Chek, said to me, "Well you know it is very common for Africans to have foster children". (They don't mean foster children in the same sense we do, of course). He explained to me in greater detail and then I realized more clearly how much it was actually happening and that it was just a different attitude towards raising children. I was devastated when my homologue's adorable granddaughter, Mommy, who is only three, went to live with another relative (her aunt and uncle) in Bamako until Dec. She would sit on my lap every night and was teaching me this Malian version of itsy bitsy spider that was about a cat . . . . But it seems to phase me a lot more than her mother and the rest of the family . . . I keep saying when we go into Bamako we need to go see her.
To go back now to what offended me that my mother said, it was during Ramadan, and she said, "Every day, all day long, she drinks water even though I am fasting, and she never brings me anything to break my fast". I had no idea that she was fasting (a lot of people weren't, and usually older people don't), nor that I was expected to be bringing her a present. I brought her some apples later, but we still had a few semi-hostile days. Later I realized I needed to make more of an effort with her, sit with her more often, even though we had a very hard time understanding each other's Bambara, and a lot of people in my host family were much harder for me to understand in general (probably because they are not literate, and it is my understanding that there is sometimes less enunciation from illiterate people) and they would immediately start laughing and make funny of me at everything I said, which obviously made me much less eager to make an effort with them. Anyway, since I have made a greater effort with them, and spent more time with them, things are going a lot better with them, they are also making a much greater effort with me. As I suspected, the big difference was getting in with the bamuso, since I got in the with the head wife (I can never properly pronounce her name, Sokony, I think, and the second wife is Mama, the third Koja) my living situation has been a lot better. She just gave me a small watermelon yesterday which I thought was very sweet of her.
Gift giving is a huge part of the culture, and that's something I've learned a lot more about in the past month. I was very offended in the beginning but am learning to take it less personally, and even that engaging in the gift giving can be fun. I was offended, for example when my mother asked for a gift. And my host sister was asking me for things constantly. I actually did the culturally appropriate/Peace Corps suggested thing, and asked my homologue (kind of like my working counterpart, guide in the village), Jege, to speak with her about it, and it hasn't been an issue with her since. People have been asking me for medicine a lot, but I feel like already word is starting to spread that I don't have medicine and I won't be disbursing any in the future. A random man on the street walked up to me and started grabbing my book bag and saying, give me your bag. But I think in general he was just kind of inappropriate. Obviously I couldn't help but be really angry with that situation, and I am pretty sure he got the message.
Anyway, besides the fact that people are asking me for things because I am white and they assume that I must therefore be rich, and that I think they associate white people with giving them things (because of NGO's, tourists, and apparently some sort of bike race that was handing things out?), I realized its not really personal. Yes, I will always be offended if a stranger asks me for my bag, or annoyed when one of my co-workers EVERY DAY compliments me on my clothes, and then says, "give it to me", but some of these individuals are just annoying, end of story. I have to take them on a case by case basis. I dealt with her by asking her the other day for something she had on, and I am trying to send the message that I think its annoying.
Anyway, I am not writing very clearly because I am starving (not because of a lack of food but because i have been on the internet for hours now), but I do really like giving small gifts when people haven't asked for anything. And I decided I needed to just loosen up about it a little bit because it was like every time someone asked me for something my anger was mounting. So one day when I had bought some cold pops, and a woman I pass every day asked me as part of the greetings, "boisson ka kane?", how's the drink, I just handed it to her. I figured she'd actually decline it, but she took it, and it was a gift for someone else. I figured all things considered, what have I really lost? 250 cfa, less than a dollar US? Its not good for me to compare back to US money since I get paid in CFA and must live on CFA, but still . . . And I figure there are enough people who have so little and are so quick to hand me gifts, complete strangers, a handful of peanuts, a cold pop, etc. One woman, Fanta Traore, gave me a cold drink, a beautiful necklace, and then when I asked the word for bracelet in Bambara, a bracelet! I had never met her before and will probably never see her again. I told myself that all these random gifts made up for the annoying people who ask me for things. And that eventually, when I don't give medicine, etc., and they see I don't give gifts or things when asked for them, but when I am not and you are actually my friend . . . . they'll get it. And if they don't, its not worth getting so upset about it.
As far as "work" goes, I am not formally really doing projects or anything yet, but I am not really supposed to right now. The Peace Corps strongly suggests that in your first three months you just work on langauge, make friend in your village, try to be accepted and do a needs assessment before you just start proposing random things. Which is fine with me. I am very content. I am a little bit surprised with myself at how laidback I am able to be here, but it is a blessing.
I go the the CSCOM (like a doctor's office, where Jege, who is a midwife works) most mornings for a few hours, and observe what's going on there, hold new born babies, talk to the mothers. Try to figure out how things work there. There are tiny new born babies every day, and I could watch an entire labor if I wanted to, but I was in the labor room one day and started to feel queasy at the site of some blood (and remembering how when I watched Uncle Joe doing surgery I had to leave the room--twice--because I came close to fainting) I figured I had better take it easy. But like today I walked in there because I knew Jege was in there, and there was a woman lying on the table, with a baby, still attached by its umbilical cord.
But then in the afternoons, I usually have tea dates with various people, go to the market (market day is Thurs.), practice English for a bit, get my hair braided, have a Malian cooking lesson. Somehow I always seem to be booked up. I really try to have a couple of hours from like 5-7 to kind of do my own thing, read or write in my journal, and then again at about 9 (when I am usually exhausted) I will read or write, or talk to someone from home.
I feel like I have three host families at site--the one I live with, my homologue's family (who I eat lunch and dinner with almost every day), and my "boss" so to speaks family. I am close with his wife, and his niece, who also braids my hair. And his daughters.
Anyway, there was a lot more I wanted to write about, and this was very disjointed, I am sorry, I can't think clearly when I am hungry. Which about the food, it has gotten WAY BETTER. Sure, there isn't as much variety as I'd like, but Jege's daughter is a really good cook, I get meat every day, at lunch and dinner. Although it is extremely hard to chew and grosses me out, I make myself have one or two small pieces for protein. I usually have rice for lunch and dinner, and it generally just alternates between two sauces: naggina, tomato sauce, my favorite, and tigadegena, peanut sauce. Even though these seem to be the two main sauces, it is actually amazing how much they can vary from cook to cook and depending on the ingredients. When there is a spicy pepper i am very happy. Sometimes I get different things, like fries, and Jege's daughter Arimata is trying to cook more American style pasta for me, which is pretty amazing . . . Also there is ZAME, my favorite Malian dish, which is like flavored rice with a few vegetables . . . . I am going to go and try to find some zame street food right now. Miracle of all miracles, I have not gotten sick here yet (besides a persistent ear problem, but that isn't Africa related). It just confirms my belief that I did, in fact, pay my dues to the stomach gods in my adolescence.
Thanks for everyone's interest in my blog, and write me any questions you want! Thanks also for all the birthday stuff I got! It was all very thoughtful. Please send me letters and if you're willing, FOOD . . . .and or magazines with current events, or newspapers (the Sunday NYTimes would be delightful) and or books . . . . anything really. Face wash, body wash. Paper products. Nice pens. I will be eternally grateful. My mom has my address and its on my facebook profile, for security reasons I can't post it here.