[For the past two months, I’ve been in training to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali. Training consists of language, cultural, and technical training. For the most part, I’ve been living with a homestay family in a village named Banankoro just south of Bamako (Mali’s capital), and every couple of weeks, I return to Tubani So, the PC training center, where I’m reunited with the 70 other trainees who signed up to be here with me.
I lucked out in my placement with a host family – not only is my family educated so they all speak French and I can actually communicate with them, but my father is a teacher and my mother is a nurse so we have more money than most families meaning that I eat really well. And most importantly, they were incredibly welcoming to me. My mother would examine my feet every night for mosquito nights, tell me how to sit so that I would digest my food properly, and decide whether I should bathe with hot or cold water.]
The last weeks in homestay village were comfortable, falling into an easy routine: peanut butter and bread after my morning bucket bath; class: lunch; making tea with my family and gossiping or stumbling over my broken phrases in Bambara’ more class and sitting around with my teachers, laughing about cultural differences or making hibiscus tea; home to take my bucket bath before the soap opera started followed by dinner; and then more gossiping and tea and cards before I brushed my teeth and tucked under my mosquito net for the night.
It’s rainy season, and we’ve had lots of rain, and even one chilly afternoon when the wind was blowing and I shivered under my rain jacket. My room had perpetually wet spots from the roof leaking, and getting to school without getting wet (or, more importantly, some horrible disease that had grown in the standing water) was more than impossible. One cooler night felt like the perfect temperature to me but my family was freezing and bundled up in their cold-weather clothes (which for my youngest sister, means soccer cleats on her feet). The discussion turned to how cold it gets in America, and my sister turned to me and said, “Samouhan, isn’t it true that in America, when snow falls on you it kills you?”
For the most part, it’s still been quite hot, and one very hot Saturday afternoon, I was having lunch with my host mother inside the house, where we could escape the sun a bit (unlike my room, built with a tin roof which attracts the sun and makes me bake and sweat every second, my family’s house is concrete and quite the cool respite). It was still hot though, and my mother, not satisfied with my assurances that I was quite fine, began yelling for my brother Sylvain to come into the room. Sylvain came in and started fanning me. For the entire meal. Imagine me – already eating the best of the family’s food, sitting on one of the coveted chairs, a well-off American in Mali – being fanned by my Malian younger brother.
I’ve become good friends with one of my language teachers, Augusta. We have fun speaking French together, playing with her daughters, and she’s taught me how to make gnomi, a Malian snack/rice pastry and the tea that Malians drink in three rounds, in tiny shot glasses with lots of sugar throughout the day. She also shares my passion for the Malian soap opera Au Couer du Pèche and takes me to the tailor to advise me on what looks good and is appropriate for me to wear: i.e. “Non, Samouhan, only Ghanaian women would wear something that short!”
Another of my language tutors, Oscar (both Oscar and Augusta are Christian, thus their Christian names), burst out laughing when we were walking home from school together one day and I greeted a family we passed. When I asked him what was so funny, he informed me that Malians find my voice hilarious – when I speak, many people think I must be joking, apparently. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that my Bambara accent must be pretty hysterical too.
I’ve also had a bit of technical training, which has largely consisted of learning how to make ameliorated porridge, oral rehydration system, and this important distinction between American and Malian cultures: In Mali, washing your hands does not mean washing your hands with soap. What’s more, washing your hands with soap is understood by many to wash away all good luck. As a health volunteer, my job is to improve the health of my community, mainly through activities like baby weighing and doing animations for my community on different health topics. While I plan to do these things in my village – one of the big projects my village wants me to start is animating on the local radio station—I also am lucky in that I can be involved in a number of different, non-health related activities. My first three months in Téné will be centered upon getting to know my community, learning about the needs of my community and how I can fit into those needs, and improving my Bambara, since I won’t be too good on the radio if I can’t understand the questions of the people who call into my show!
My Bambara is improving though. The best feeling is when I learn something in class and then go home and understand what someone’s saying. Like when I was home one day and a visitor was over and I spoke to him for a few minutes in my limited Bambara, and then he turned to my mother and they began jabbering so fast I couldn’t keep up. Until I heard my mother say, in relation to me, “A hakili kadi. Cinen don,” meaning “She’s very smart, it’s true.” Or, on the one day that I walked out of my compound wearing my hair down and passed a construction project, on the day after I had learned adjectives, and could hear all the men saying I was pretty. My steps in language learning are slow but moving forward. At my permanent site in Téné, I will continue to learn Bambara, but this time without a teacher who speaks English, or even someone who is trained as a teacher.
Leaving Banankoro, my homestay village, was hard. I’d become so comfortable with my family and I’d gotten used to my routines and grown to love my long walk over the hill to school every morning. I loved that every day I would do something to cause someone in my family to say “Oh, Samouhan, you didn’t really do that, did you?” or, “Agh! Samouhan!” when I did something outrageous or surprising like tell the visitor to quit calling me “Toubab muso” (white woman). I’ll miss playing cards with my brothers and watching the soap opera – none of my neighbors seem to have a television in my permanent site. I’ll miss how well I eat and the fact that my family has an indoor bathroom, which may not have functioning plumbing, but at least I can take my bucket shower in there when it’s pouring down rain.
My sister, Kiki, is coming to have dinner at Tubaniso, the PC training center, on Thursday, though, which will be fun and will help me feel like I’m still in touch with my family.
And now, the next step in my adventure is about to begin:
On Friday, I will swear in at the U.S. Embassy as a real, live Peace Corps volunteer (provided I pass my language test this afternoon, that is). And then…and then, I head out to my village. All alone.
I’m excited and nervous. Excited to finally settle in and unpack. To get started, make friends, begin to feel comfortable in my village, Téné. Nervous because I’ll be the only American/English speaker/outsider in my village, because I still don’t really speak Bambara, because I won’t have a routine and don’t really know what I’m going to do when I get there.
In fact, for the first three months at site, we’re not really supposed to do much. Rather, I will use my first three months to continue learning Bambara and get acquainted with my community. Sure, maybe I’ll weigh some babies, but I won’t start any major projects until almost February, which makes me feel like a bit of a lame duck, not to mention that I’m worried about how I’ll fill my time.
Wish me luck!
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