An Ka Taa

July 7, 2010 at 8:00 am (Uncategorized)

Maybe not exactly flox, but as I walk through the rows of freshly tilled soil, rough and silty, waiting for our little plots of sorghum to come along and sprout up.  The small plots are lined with sweet grasses, studded with papaya trees and baobabs.  Small, hopeful leaves of crisp green lettuce shoot from the dry earth, looking vulnerable in the hot sun.  Further into the plot, maize and other stalks take over the space.  At what looks like the back, a small, rectangular clay tub full of hatchlings of catfish and tilapia waiting to be sent to volunteers all over the country, With sediment from the bottom feeding into the crop soil.  All connected.But then, at the very back, tucked away in between a baobab and a shea nut tree…bees.

I have no earthly idea if the Bambara of “let’s go” is appropriate in this context, but until I learn better, it’s what I’m going with.  A couple of extra hours in Charles de Gaulle, a midnight drive to Tubaniso (the Peace Corps compound outside of the city) and a crash course in going to the bathroom in a hole before bed.

I woke up (with my body having no idea what planet I’m on, let alone what time it is – 5:30, for the record) to a deserted site full of mud huts and a cacophony of bird calls.  After a morning of meetings about how to not die, we took our first daytime drive through Bamako on the way to the American Club for 4th of July celebrations.  Dust and brush.  Mules and goats.  Bumping along the dirt roads past bicycles and motor scooters and bush taxis that are all either braver or more fool-hardy than I’ll ever be.  Going the wrong way around turnabouts and going along roads at a forty-five degree angle.  The streets are lined with stalls of…something.  Parts?  Fruit?  Peanuts?  Some strange amalgamation of the three?

First full day of classes included the introduction to the environmental program:  non-timber forests, gardening and food preservation, nutrition, fisheries, hybrids, sorghum, sustainability, the whole gambit.

And first lessons in Bambara.  And learning to eat with our hands on mats, starting with fried rice and tomato, potato and cucumber salad for lunch.  Only one oil stain.  I count that as highly successful.  And we were rewarded for our efforts with spaghetti for dinner.  Old man shuffle steps, as my roommate might put it.

And a tea ceremony in the evening.  I’ve seen so many things that I want to share, and yet at the compound I’ve seen nothing.  Dunan nyekili ka bon, nka a te yelke.  A stranger had big eyes, but can’t see.

K’an sogoma here caya.