Thanksgiving Pictures

1. Dinner at the Ambassador's house!
2. Me and Chirs with his festive thanksgiving shirt fashioned by a Malian tailor
3. The regional group laughing over some pictures
4. My teammates Caroline, Dave, and Hunter

So Thankful

So Thanksgiving has arrived, and it still feels like mid-summer here. Until I really stop to think about it, things like apple cider, pumpkin pie, and colorful foliage (I guess even snow now I hear?) easily slip my mind. But as I sit here in my teammate Caroline’s hut, I am hit with the nostalgia of all these things. Simple things really, that I am missing now. But nonetheless, there is no lack of things, simple and great, that I can be thankful for today.
I am thankful I have found a place in my community. I am thankful that I have really gotten to know the Malians on a personal level.
I am thankful that my homolouge makes rice everyday for lunch instead of To, like most of her neighbors.
I am thankful I have stayed healthy- physically and emotionally- in a new and strange environment.
I am thankful for the fields to run in, the multitude of stars at night, the packages and letters from home. I just got a whole slew of letters today, and it embarasses me that I haven't been able to write everyone back in a timely manner.
I am thankful I can talk to my family once a week.
I am thankful that people back in the states are doing such honest and dedicated work to make the world a better place. Especially FACE AIDS Geneseo. If you haven’t checked out their amazing work this semester, you can see it here . Dec 1 is World AIDS Day, and there are tons of events going on, including the premier of “The One Who Speaks” a play that I adopted from and interview of an amazing Ugandan girl.
I am thankful that I grew up with the world of opportunities at my feet. My country, my community, and especially, my family, not only taught me but showed me that I could do anything I wanted to do, that I could be anything I wanted to be. And I see out here in the villages, there are people of such wisdom, talent, and potential, that were never offered piano lessons, were never taught how to use a computer, or even how to read and write, never had sports or theater or all of these other amazing things I had. I am thankful I went to a good school, I am thankful I have seen and learned about the outside world. I don’t know how I got so blessed.
I am thankful that people are actually starting to understand my Bambara.
I am thankful that the Troure twins, once severely malnourished, returned to the CSCOM healthy and plump. They are the first to officially graduate from our program.
I am thankful for the friends I have made here. My teammates Hunter, Caroline, Dave and Chris, have become like a family to me.
Going off of that, I am thankful I am safe. A scary experience, which I will spare you the details, occurred last week involving me loosing my way on a moonless night. With the help of friends, friendly strangers, and angles, I was guided to a safe harbor.
I am thankful for the support back at home, the eagerness to help, and the prospect of doing good work in Dombila off of your contributions.
Granola bars, new socks, calcium chews, whole grain cereals, protein powder, Gatorade or propel water powder, baby wipes, disposable razors, face wash, and pictures from home. I will be thankful for these things immensely, that is if anyone decides to send a couple in a Christmas package hint hint. The Malians also really liked almonds and Welch’s fruit snacks. And as I said before that big packages were hard to transport… well I can make it work…
Alright, enough for being greedy. This is a day to be thankful. And though my plans changed, it looks like I will still have quite an amazing Thanksgiving here in Bamako. If all works out, I will be attending Thanksgiving dinner at the ambassador’s house. Though it will be no clover lanes, no sunset bulavard, no aunt sue’s bread and jokes at the kids table, it may be nice. I can’t even begin to say how much I am going to miss home on thanksgiving night. But as for now, I am not dwelling on this. I am thankful. So thankful. That I have a loving home in Rochester New York, full of loving, amazing people that have showered me with support. I am thankful that I have now also found a loving home in Mali.

Humbled

Lately, I’ve been searching for humility in this town. As I get more and more comfortable with my job, I worry about outshining my counterpart or becoming too affirmative about my ideas. Still worshiped by the local children, I worry about jealously and such things. I am not anything special, I just have different color skin than you. And the fact that so many people are eager to befriend me, I have realized, may indeed be because they are looking for money. I still get asked everyday if I will give away my bike, my watch, and my two younger sidekicks, Cesalo and Amadou, with beg for candy if they ever find me alone.

So I live for humbling moments. I live for instances when I see that a person can do something remarkable on their own, something I cannot do, something I cannot help them with. It was, of course, Shaka. Our runs together have become less and less frequent as my work has picked up at the CSCOM. And if Cesalo and Amadou come, they are slow and interrupted. So the other night, I was lucky to squeeze in 5 miles with him in the evening. After 5 he said he was tired and we should go back home. It seemed unlike him, but perhaps his body was exhausted from working the fields all day. So he went to his house, I went to mine, got a quick sip or water, and headed out for another couple of miles before nightfall.

And we caught each other. I found Shaka on the road. Running like I have never seen him before. Bulleting through the dusty fields. He had snuck out to run faster, but did not want to embarrass me by saying so. The next evening, I asked him as we slowly jogged through the fields. “Shaka, do you run by yourself a lot?”
“Yes.” I figured he just kind of waited for me to run, and just did normal 12 year old kid stuff on his own.
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
“When you run by yourself, do you run faster than this?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.” He looked embarrassed, and almost ashamed, but when I gave him the encouraging look, he picked up the pace, little by little, so as I could follow. “Can you pass me Shaka?” And then he did it, he just flew by, with the most beautiful form I’ve ever seen, leaving me huffing and puffing, putting more and more distance on me until he graciously slowed down to wait for me to catch up. I haven’t run this fast in a while. And as I think I have a pretty respectable running resume, here I am, completely winded and dusting by a 12 year old boy. I’m humbled, and honestly, it feels great.
“Why don’t you run like that when we run together?”
“You are my teacher, it would be wrong to run faster than my teacher.” I explained to him that this was not correct, and that my running teacher was an old man who would drive his car next to us as we ran. Shaka proceed to answer my questions. He runs quite a bit on his own, and usually has already run earlier in the day when we go out together in the evening. He runs fast and far for two weeks, and then slow for two weeks. Not the most sophisticated training plan I have ever heard, but the fact that he has one, that his is systematic and consistent is above and beyond what I expected of him.
“Are you running with me to the market tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” He says with a smile, and I know he had already planned to run there, but to wait for my slow pace was not on the agenda.
“You want to run fast don’t you?” He nods with an embarrassed smile. And I explain to him that if I find an odemeter for my bike, the first thing I want to do is time him in a 5k.
And all my dreams for him came rushing back. I had been ignoring them for a while, thinking my work at the CSCOM was first and foremost priority. Which it is, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t really search for a means for this kid to shine. Its hard though, my homolouge and host family disapprove me spending so much time with him. My homolouge is convinced he is going to steal something from me one day, and I see how the other village kids are jealous. Something is drawing me towards him though. This kid is meant for something bigger than the millet fields of Dombila.
“What do you want to do when you grow up Shaka?”
“Oh I don’t know.” He thinks for a while. “I want to go to America and be a teacher. I want to teach Bambara to Americans.” I give a slight chuckle at his precious naivite.
“Americans don’t really study Bambara in America. But you could work for the Peace Corps one day in Bamako and teach Americans like me how to live in Mali and speak Bambara.” He agreed that that would be pretty cool.

The Mysterious Vegetable

Arriving at Tomba again, I was pleased to see that many of the babies there have been gaining weight. Yaya Coulibaly informed me proudly that he had been encouraging them all the cook ameliorated porridge. A few were still on the dangerous end, so I invited them to the CSCOM where we are launching off a new program for malnourished children starting November 30. At the end of my presentation on treating wounds, one of the women in the crowd came up with a brilliant idea. “Oh! We should show Aminata my garden!” Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. So after the baby weighing session, a crowd of Malians led me excitedly to a garden. It looked like just any other old garden. Cabbage. But in the middle was this large weird beet thing. It was tan and bigger than my head, happily growing in the soil. “What is this?” The owner of the garden asked me. This tends to happen a lot. Malians quiz me on the names of things, especially food. “I don’t know. What’s it called?” Over and over they asked me. You don’t know? She doesn’t know! And everyone burst out into laughter. Ok, my horrible Bambara isn’t that funny.
“This doesn’t come from your country?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
More laughter. “Well we don’t know what it is either!” Turns out some white people (an agricultural NGO from Germany, I later found out) came and planted it as part of a project to introduce new foods into the community. One result: a large weird beet head thing sitting in the middle of this women’s garden, which people young and old would come and look at. And they were so excited when another white person came who could tell them what it was. What in God’s name is this thing? They said again to themselves. And I just had to laugh with them.

Death in Dombila

I’m feeling great lately, health wise. I’ve been eating well, exercising a lot, sleeping great and staying cool. My body is really adapting to this place. It knows the rhythm of things, it awakes with the rising of the steaming African sun, it rests as the moon comes out. It’s found its place in nature- I find nutrients in the leaves of trees hidden in the fields to cook in my dinner. I never worry about getting lost in the vast espace of rolling hills because the sun guides me home.

As my own self has been refreshed and renewed under Dombila’s sky, this peace has been clouded by the poor health of my neiighbors. For some reason, a lot of people died this week. It began with a phone call to my homolouge. Her close, middle-aged friend had fallen sick and died unexpectedly. As she cried outside her home, no one really comforted her. Malians don’t hug, as I have written before. And though I wanted to put my arm around her, I settled with giving blessings and leaving her be. She left town for the rest of the week.

Shaka and Amadu, two of my three sidekicks, experienced the death of their grandfather. I had met the guy, old yes, but still in tact with things. The funeral was quite strange. No one really did anything. The men sat in a clump together, the women sat together, some chatted, some gave blessings. We ate. We left. And I still felt awkward, I still felt strange that no one was showing any major reaction to this death. Shaka seemed fine the whole day. But as we went for our afternoon run, he took me by his grave, and we stopped to look at the mound of fresh dirt. There are many ways to say “I’m sad” in Bambara. He chose: “Aminata, my heart is angry.” We took it slow and jogged back home. I spoke of the day my grandmother died, and how I felt. We agreed it was ok to cry, that he is not suffering anymore, that he is with God in heaven.

I can understand when an old person dies. It is tragic, but I can accept it. But when a child dies, good God.
This is hard for me to write right now. I am almost hesitant in publishing my feelings here, but I have to at least write them down. Vaccination day- the head nurse had left for another village, my homolouge was gone at her friend’s funeral. It was just me and the vaccinator and a few helping hands to deal with 30 or so screaming babies. It’s become customary to hand over the malnourished kids to me, because I have taken on the rehabilitation program as one of my projects, and weighing babies is one of the simple tasks I can handle now. Most of the children getting vaccinated were 3 months old, and their mothers tried to listen to my demonstration on ameliorated porriage over the cries of squirming children.

“Aminata, look. Here’s a malnourished child. Put him on the program.” Now most of the children in the program are around 1 years old. This kid was 6. I took one look at him and the first thought that shot through my head was “He is going to die.” His mother tried to feed him some porriage, and he could barely keep his eyes open. At 11 kilos, he was less than 60% of his peferred body weight. Less than 80% is considered malnourished. I’ve never seen a skinnier, sicker looking child. And here, they handed him over to me. “Give him some of the rehabilitation food packets.”

So what do I do? Alright, I measured him, I weighed him. I checked for dehydration, body swelling. I went through the motions and then I just realized, God, there is nothing I can do for him.

“I think this child is really sick. We should send him to the hospital.” The vaccinator came to look at him, “Yes, you’re right. But we can’t do that without the head nurse. He needs to write a referral.” He send the woman home, who had already walked 5 miles with this 6 year old child on her back, and instructed her to come back in the morning.

I’m not a doctor. Even if I was, there is no equipment here to work with. I have no car. Even if I did, there are no reliable roads, no ambulance. Perhaps tomorrow, we can call for a car. When the nurse gets back, we have to send him to the hospital. Yet the urgency I felt was not reflected in my company. The boy’s mother, the vaccinator, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say they didn’t care. But what can they do?

I told the nurse of this situation the next morning. And I waited and waited for their return. By lunchtime, I asked the vaccinator why they hadn’t come back. He turned to another man who had come from his village to ask of his whereabouts. “Oh he died,” he responded casually. When? “Last night.” And that was it.

And I went into the empty maternity by myself, the same place I had examined the boy, and tried to straighten out his crippled body over the measuring board. I had held him just a few hours before his death. And my anger came from every direction, I was looking for someone to blame but truthfully, the thought that haunted me was that there was nothing we could have done. I came here to help in someway, but there are children dying in front of me, and all I know how to do is hand them a package of “Plumpy Nut” and write their weight on a sheet of paper, only to stuff it away because usually, the babies we see come once and never return again.

There is a long way to go. A long way. Another PCV came to visit for a few days to look at the water sanitation situation in Dombila. Anxious to get the projects going, he gave me great advice. “You can’t feel guilty about not doing work in the first three months.” It’s true. The first three months are for assessment purposes and our projects are to start after our mid-service training in January. But how can I not feel guilty when women are coming up to me, explaining symptoms of a pinched siatic nerve, or a stomach ulcer. And I know what’s wrong. I know there are medicines to treat this. But none that they can access, afford, or find someone qualified enough to administer them. So I hesitantly say, “I’m sorry, I’m not a doctor.” They understand. But they tell me when I go back to states, I should become one, and then return to help them again. Do you want to learn how to make ameliorated porriage?

Belly Laughs

The guard at the CSCOM is one of my joking cousins. And as my language is improving, the jokes are getting more and more elaborate. This guy and his wife remind me of my neighbors back on Hickory Lane, the Bonivillas. They are just hysterical, and have made me laugh more than I ever have in Dombila before. Binot, the guard, wears camlefloge every day. He shaves his head, has a gotie, but really, he doesn’t do anything but sit around, drink tea and smoke cigarettes. I’d like to take this opportunity to document some of his comments to me. The translation is not direcet, but I’m trying to get the full effect here.

“Aminata- when you play guitar, you sound like you are crying” He then imitates me wailing and playing a ballad on the guitar. “You cry and cry- you really need to just rock it and dance around.”

“You can’t even find a husband Aminata. I’m gonna go to the Peace Corps office and pay someone to get you a husband. You’re worth about $1.”

“Nah, I don’t like her. She’s too skinny. I like women with some meat on them. They gotta be fat. Like this woman over there. She’s fat. But I don’t like her, because he mind is totally gone.” (He’s refering to my homolouge’s daughter, who I am learning day by day really is a little wound up in the head)

“I’m going back to America with you.” (Now, everyone says this to me, and it’s usually followed by “I’m gonna make a lot of money”)
“What are you going to do in America Binot?”
“I’m gonna be Barak Obama’s body guard. I’m gonna wear cool sunglasses and ride around in a big, sweet, black car, and if anyone messes with Barak, I’m gonna pound them….. And I’m gonna make a lot of money.”

His wife shows up at the maternity. “Aminata, it’s time for my prenatal counsel.” “Oh really! I didn’t know you were pregnant!” “Yup. Quadrupulets.” She points to four places on her stomach and I hear the roaring laugh of her husband in the background.

It’s the Malian version of the Bonavillas!

PICTURES!

1. My hut! The first door on the left goes to by bedroom. The next door goes to my “negen” or little hole in the ground where I poop. And on the right is my kitchen/ storage area.
2. Bakary, the vaccinator, waiting for baby vaccinations to start in one of the distant villages
3. My homologue, Irene, shucking peanuts
4. Me and my homolouge’s daughter, Denise
5. Me and Irene
6. My host brother, Pacho, goofing off as always
7. Working in the peanut fields. That’s my host dad in the teal shirt and red hat brewing up some tea
8. Me outside the door of my hut