Beginnings

My host family can’t believe that my big brother isn’t married yet. Especially an educated and successful science teacher like Johnny.

They also can’t believe I’m not married, and my sisters have taken it upon themselves to find me a husband. Their serious, number one pick is Madu, an eligible bachelor who has just finished his studies. They like to tell me how smart he is, and then bemoan the fact that he hasn’t been able to find a job since he finished university. “You can take him back to America with you,” they say brightly, as if they’ve suddenly lit upon perfect solution for everyone: Madu will be able to find a job, and I’ll have someone to look after me.

My host mother stays away from my marriage plans, but she has designs for everything else in my life. She decides what kind of water I should bathe with (fresh from the well or hot water that has been heated), and after I’ve taken my bucket bath and we’ve watched Couer au Peche (a remarkable Brazilian soap opera dubbed in French that we – and half of the village who comes to our compound to watch the show on a black and white tv run off of a car battery), we sit down to dinner together. Except the sitting is a rather elaborate process. I must sit just so (à la africaine, she calls it), with my legs at an angle I can never get quite right, my back supported, my left hand in my lap, and my right hand primed for eating.

And she really wants me to be primed for eating. Her goal is to fatten me up as much as possible – a guest who has been treated well should only leave fatter, and she constantly demands that I eat more, more, more. Even after telling her I’m full, thanking her for the food, and moving towards the sali dega to wash my hands, she’s handing me an entire fish that she demands I eat, never taking no for an answer.

I seem to be improving. The other night, she told me she was truly content: I had performed a “tour de force” on my dinner! I did feel quite proud too.

My family is Bomu, a minority ethnic group in Mali, and they’re also Christian, meaning that our family is quite small. With only 7 people in the compound and one wife, my family dwindles in comparison to neighboring compounds with four wives and over 20 people. The Bomu people are known for having pets, really caring for their pets and loving them as creatures, which is not too common in West Africa in general. We have one dog, Wilfred, and when I arrived, there were two new kittens, tiny little “bêtes” as my father called them. They wandered around meowing constantly, and one of them soon took a liking to me, and me to him. He would follow me around the compound mewing, hoping for a pat and making even a bit of my powdered milk.

One night, during the showing of Coeur au Peche, right after Octavio had been wrongly convicted of murdering his own father, there was a commotion in the street, Wilfred was barking and growling rowdily, and everyone ran out to investigate. I stayed where I was, curious as to how the evil and newly wealthy Barbara would react to Octavio’s conviction. From the street, there came cries of “Jackuma…Jackuma!!” (“Cat…Cat!!”), and my stomach did a little flip. Something had definitely transpired between Wilfred and my new friend, but I was wary to run out and see. That night, the kitten did not follow me around, and I couldn’t spot him anywhere in the compound. A few nights later I finally got up the courage to ask my family: Did Wilfred eat the kitten? Yep, he sure did.

When I’m not with my family, I’m at school, desperately hoping to learn a bit of Bambara so I can figure out what my family is saying about me. I’ll hear my name, Samouhan, mentioned in conversation over and over, but with so little grasp on Bambara, I have no idea whether I’ve made a huge cultural faux-pas, or whether my family’s just plotting when Madu should come over next to seduce me.

However, the chances of me learning what it is they’re saying about me seem slim. In comparison to the other PC villages, where trainees spend up to 7 hours in language class, I spend maybe 2 hours trying to work on my Bambara. My teachers, Oscar, Brahima, and Augusta, enjoy long breaks up to an hour or even two, taking time to make tea, and discussing the regions of Mali too much to focus on language as much as we should be. It makes for fun and slow days hanging out with the teachers, but my language skills are suffering. How am I supposed to conduct an entire meeting, lecture, or radio show about health issues in Bambara? Hopefully language lessons will quickly improve.

I received my site assignment for the next two years today. I’ll be living in a village of about 4,000 people in the region of Segou, about 50K from the city San. Whoa. It’s a lot to digest, especially when I still have so many questions. Like – will there be cold Fanta for sale? I’ll find out in about a week and a half when I head out to visit my site for a week.