Still being called Tubab

My apologies for the delay on new blogs. A lot has been going on personally, my mind cluttered with things that I just couldn’t find blog-appropriate words for. With a pretty solid plan for the rest of my service, I’ve been recently thrown for some loops. A potentially serious relationship ended, because of just that- it was getting potentially serious. A position I thought I had locked, Health Trainer for the July-September training for new volunteers, was given to someone else. And I’m left now with a month of village work left, and 4 more months of floundering until I go home, to do some more floundering.
We all want purpose, and I believe we all have purpose. In the hot hours of the day when the rest of the village is sleeping or sipping tea, I spend a lot of time alone, just writing or thinking. We want purpose for what? Ourselves? Our society? God? We are happiest when we’re busy, entrusted with a great task, and then praised for our good work. But here I am among people who are perfectly at peace of mind drinking tea and surrendering their afternoon to the sizzling, hypnotic sun. I, on the other hand, am restless. I’m running so much, thinking so much of home, obsessively trying to map my life’s route sans destination. Without always 4realizing it, I’m missing Irene, who had some sort of larger-than-life way about everything that kept days at the CSCOM moving. Here in Dombila, we got some work done. We have a little work left to do. But can I really sit here in my hut going crazy through the slow rainy season?
I have some traveling I want to do, but I feel site guilt even now. I’ve worked but I want to work more. Tireless determination. It’s something I long for but it easily fails to launch in 113 degree heat. I want to go to hidden stone villages of Dogon country, and out to Uganda to solve some mysteries regarding an AIDS victim that has haunted my thoughts for four years. I want to run, run, run. And then, I want to go home. My friends are extending their services in other countries: Hunter’s off to China, Caroline to Nicaragua, Chris to Fiji, and others are looking for jobs or preparing for grad school. I could be off somewhere- there are plenty of opportunities for me in Africa and beyond. I could search for a job in a city as I’m preparing for grad school in 2011. But right now, and I know I might change my mind, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than home.
At least there are mangos. More than imaginable. We’ve had short passing wind storms that whip dust into your face and drop mangos like bombs all around. You literally have to duck and cover. I meticulously solar dry the fruit, with the admiration but reluctance to participate from my Malian neighbors.
There is still plenty to keep me busy for a while. School is still in session, and we’re finishing up the health lessons, preparing for the mural project, and training the high schoolers for their physical education final exam (in long jump, shot put, and 100m dash). We have a couple of wells left to finish, as well as a big finale to the project, an evaluation and goal-setting two day conference with Peace Corps Volunteers. We’re supervising the community health workers more closely, and have their first official report review on Thursday. My new homologue and I attended a week long training session at Tubaniso, and returned with more ideas on nutrition and food security. Lauren is also busy raising money for new desks at her school (you can donate through www.peacecorps.gov), launching a soap formation, and training adult literacy teachers.
I’ve been filling up journals, trying to foresee the ending of this story instead of living it. I’m taking it day by day, even now. In truth, I’m terrified of the transition, and I’m longing for some structure and plan. But I have to accept that I’m still on an adventure, and these strange dust storms come at unexpected times. I am not sure where I’ll end up, and why. I just hope that, underneath the scattered and thirsty dirt roads I run, there is purpose.

My other job- Playdoh supervisor

Some Christian group came with cartons of Christmas packages for the kids in 1st-6th grade. It was such a mystery as to what was in them, for they were not to be opened until the American patron came. It would have been interesting to meet these guys, reportedly from North Carolina, but I was careful to keep my distance from the commotion. A while back a World Vision truck came giving someones unwanted dress shirts and dozens of Breast Cancer Awareness visors, probably left over from some unsuccessful event. I barely entered the scene, scored a visor from the insistence of the Malians, and for weeks afterwords, paid the repercussions.
“Aminata! Aminata!” I’d hear passing on my bike, “I didn’t get a hat!” “Where’s my teeshirt?” Ahh! I have no part in this! What would give you the idea that those boxes of unwanted clothes were my doing? Oh yeah, I’m white.
Needless to say, I made sure I had no part in the Christmas boxes. But I would be called into duty. Kids came home with pretty sweet boxes, filled with little toys, candy, soap, toothbrushes, even princess underwear that the boys constantly poked fun at Madu for receiving. Yet some things were just plain confusing. I had to stop Sali at the pharmacy for completely opening the chemicals in an instant handwarmer packet, school girls were rubbing glue sticks on their lips, people were approaching me for explanations of smelly candles, tree ornaments, glow sticks and lufas. But the most mysterious item of them all was first brought to attention by the middle school math teacher. “Aminata. We’re all wondering. What is ‘plaaeydoh?’”
Playdoh was a frequently found treasure in the packages, but misinterpreted as soap, cooking oil, chewing gum, or candy. All throughout the village, people young and old were trying to wash themselves with Playdoh or make it into an afternoon snack. It was getting too much.
“Dusu,” I said to my college at the CSCOM one day after vaccinations, “You want to come help me do a health animation at the school?” We went together, but not to talk about sanitation or malaria, but to explain to each class: This is playdoh. It’s a toy. Do not eat it!
“People are going to kill themselves!” Shaka exclaimed hanging out with the boys under my hanger. “They have no idea what any of this stuff is! If you weren’t here Aminata, we’d have some big problems. These gifts are crap!”
“They’re not crap,” I said, but couldn’t help agreeing with Shaka when he commented that they will all just turn into piles of trash in the next few months. That money should have gone to help fix the road, he decided. When did he get so insightful?
Nevertheless, kids are excited about the toys. They’ve never gotten anything like this before, so its special and exciting. I’m even a little jealous. It looks like packages I’d get from home, all of the M&Ms and life savers and such. Sweet, sweet America. Complete with a “Jesus loves you” blessing. I know even Shaka appreciated it, at least for the aspect of his favorite subject, cultural exchange. “When I become a big patron, I’m going to send boxes of Malian stuff to American school kids.”
“What would you send them?”
He had to think about that for a while. “Bicycles.”
These programs have a place in what we’re doing, as a simple act of kindness. Kindness can go a long way, but is not the only answer to these deep rooted problems. I’ll spare you another lament on the controversies of charity and development work, and leave you with the true moral of the story: Think twice before you send playdoh to Africa.

Run to Kati

It had been talked about so much it had almost become a joke. Someday, we’ve been saying since last year, Shaka and I are going to run to the city of Kati. I tried writing training plans for him, get him to stick to some routine. However, I’d be ready for an afternoon run to find that he was cross-training by pulling water in the garden or that he went out to chase some rabbit through the fields with a sling-shot, or he was biking all around town doing his father’s errands. A week would go by and he’d only hop in a couple of my runs for 20 or 30 minutes. Then when he’d finally buckle down and run for an hour, it’d be like nothing. He was a natural, and just ran to the beat of his own drum. So finally I abandoned the notion of a routine, and proposed that we just do it.
We’d kid each other by backing out, or suggesting that we run even further than Kati, or that we’d each do it with one of the kids piggy-backing. I think we were both a little nervous, on my end, I was nervous that I was pressuring him into doing something he wasn’t ready for or he didn’t want to do. We decided to break up the 19 mile run by running 5 the afternoon before, spending the night at Caroline’s in Dio, and then run the remaining 14 at the crack of dawn. I wasn’t completely convinced he was serious about it until he showed up at my door, wearing the new jelly sandals I had picked up at the market, complemented by knee-high rainbow and heart studded socks with “LOVE” printed on them. They were another treasure in the infamous Christian gift boxes.
“Why are you laughing?” He asked.
“Nothing it’s nothing. Your socks, they’re high that’s all.” He starts to roll them down. “No! No! Please don’t. Leave them like that.” Caroline had to see this.
The three of us spent the evening playing cards and strolling the town. I was nervous he wouldn’t be able to eat in an unfamiliar setting, and at first he was reluctant to even admit he had an appetite. But as I watched him wolf down a large plate of beans and pasta I realized that this was probably the best meal he’s had in a long time.
Shaka didn’t sleep that night, fighting the heat inside Caroline’s house. Nevertheless, he was up with the dawn, left for his usual morning wander (he likes to just walk around a little in the morning), and joined me for some bread and coffee. I let him fix his own, and boy do Malians like their sugar. In the silence of the sunrise, we hardly spoke, except to crack a few jokes. “Let’s just run home.”
But he was all business as we set out on the road in a slow trot. The first 5 miles or so were like any other run we’ve done. We chatted away, about the buildings we passed, and what could be inside that mysterious cement factory, and how far the train tracks go. He kept asking me if we had arrived at Diago, a village about 8 miles from Dio, starting 10 minutes into the run. Does he realize how long this is going to be?
I clocked us at a safe 8:45 pace and forced him to take a sip of water after 75 minutes. He was doing fine, and I think enjoying seeing these new landmarks on the gloriously paved road. After about an hour and a half we arrived at the poste, the truck stop about 3 or 4 miles out from Hunter’s house. It was there we took a ten second water break, and there that Shaka stopped talking to me. I told him we were 20 minutes out, knowing it was more like 30 minutes. His eyebrows hardened, and his arms took wider swings. “It’s not your legs or your body that will get you there now,” I said, “it’s your courage.” We treaded on up a gradual uphill. A few minutes later he replied, “My courage is ‘a baana’”. ‘Finished.’
Yet he refused to stop or to slow the pace. We reached the city, and I knew that he thought every house we passed was Hunter’s. Little did he know we still had a couple of miles. “Yes we can!” I said in English. He thought we had arrived. Oh, not yet.
Cresting the last hill, just 600 meters from the finish, he proposed we walk a bit. “No way! I said! We’re already there!” So he picked up the pace, somehow landing softly on a rocky ground in flimsy plastic sandles, automatically corrected his posture, and soared. I did a little cheer as we rounded the last corner, a minute over 2 hours, slapped him a bunch of high fives, and caught his embarrassed smile toward the ground.
We found Hunter still asleep but prepared with Shaka’s reward of cocunuts and cold soda pops. The day was a bit awkward, walking around the city, showing the quiet Shaka things he’d never seen before- the jail, the hospital, the internet café. I bought him some yogurt, which he loved, and we made avocado and egg sandwhiches for lunch. We relaxed in Hunter’s house with fans and tile floors, and I asked Shaka if he had ever bathed in a shower before.
“No,” he replied, “Have you?”
I turned it on to show him, and he jumped back in fright at the water spewing from the shower head. But when he emerged looking clean and content, I asked him how it was. He nodded. “It was alright.”
We watched a movie with Hunter on his computer, and Shaka said he missed his mom. The whole day, I wasn’t sure if he was glad we came or not. We piled in a bush taxi to get us back to Dio, and then he biked alongside me as I ran back to Dombila. We passed an old man who asked, as they do every market day,“Hey, did she run all the way from Dio?” Shaka answered yes, and biked by. Then he turned around and replied, “Do you think Dio’s far for us?” And I told him of the great feat that we had just accomplished- running to Kati. After that, Shaka opened up and talked with such enthusiasm about Hunter’s house and the Kati market. “We gotta go back,” he said. “But next time, we’ll take a car.”
“You didn’t have a nice run?”
“No, the run was great!” he said. “But next time, we’re taking a car.”