Hiatus. Or Learning to Do Very Little, Slowly

November 29, 2010 at 8:39 am (Uncategorized)

After nearly a month of languishing — I mean, um, resting — in Bamako, I finally have a new site waiting for me.  As I’m finding to be typical in this country, it’s nothing like what I expected to get.  An altogether different region, Kita, in the west of Mali.  Much smaller — my village has around six hundred people.  Near a national forest (if googlemaps is to be believed, although I tend to think their information about arid African nations is probably not the most accurate).  Oh, and a different language.  Of course.  So, today I start learning Bambara.  Because everyone needs two obscure, rarely-used languages under their belts.

I’ll leave for my new site right after In-Service Training, which starts next week and goes through the middle of December.  With any luck, my homologue will be coming down for the training, so I’ll be able to meet him and not be entirely at a loose end when I move into village.  It’s a funny thing starting over again, when you’ve already spent so much of the past months in upheaval.  Just when your feet are under you, it’s time to make a change.  And actually inhabiting the stage house in Bamako for a month is a sort of surreal experience.  Certainly not one to make you feel as though there’s any constancy in your life.  I became a sort of a fixture there, installed in the house and watching the rest of the world swirling around me.

What does one do with a month in the capital and absolutely nothing pressing for immediate attention?

1.  Run.  How else was I going to know that there is a cigar bar in downtown Bamako or that the lights on the Rue de Mali go off at exactly 6:07 or that there’s a street entirely composed of men selling beautiful plants (apparently crepe and myrtle does quite well here)?

2.  Become friends with the guards.  And try to time all trips to the bureau to coincide with the moment at which the head guard will be wearing his glasses.  They make him look very grandfatherly.

3.  Cook.  Things like basque soup, roasted chickpeas, baked pumpkin falafel, groundnut stew, pumpkin chips, pumpkin seeds, hummus, roasted winter vegetables, eggplant pizzas…Yes, I bought a pumpkin at market, had to haul it home, and then figure out what to do with it.

4.  Can various strange-looking vegetables.  Or really just that damn pumpkin.  But it made incredible pumpkin butter.

5.  Watch the same mediocre movies over and over.  When you live in the house you lose all control of the TV to anyone who’s in town for a few days.  Which means that sometimes 28 Weeks Later is playing in the background three days in a row.

6.  Become intimately familiar with the Sotrama system.  Those green public buses, packed to the gills and weaving though the insane moto drivers through the increasingly narrow streets.  Bashee-tigis (those in charge of driving, taking money, etc.) hang out of the windows to call to each other and potential passengers, rapping smartly on the side of the bus to signal a quick stop for package-laden women to hop on or off.  The Sugu Ba suddenly coming up, signaled by an impenetrable wall of people and, well, stuff.  There’s no telling what could be found there:  plastic dolls, yards and yards of cloth, ready-made clothes, fruit, vegetables, full meals in paper wrapping, doled out by women standing over fires and fryers, phones, beads, unidentifiable spices, incense and perfume…Somewhere in the middle is the artisan market, boasting gorgeous jewelry and leather-work, instruments, furniture, paintings, masks and sculptures.  It’s all just too much.  Particularly when you have to have a fairly in-depth conversation with everyone that you pass (Good morning!  How was your night?  It was good.  Did you wake in peace?  Peace only.  How’s your family?  No problem.  And your other family?  They’re pretty good too.  And those people over there?  I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I’m sure they’re just great.  How are you?  Me?  I’m fine.  Are you a bean-eating Coulibaly?  Why no, I’m from the Traore clan.  Traore?!  I’m your brother!  Well, that’s nice.  How about those bandit Diarra’s?  They’re really bad.  Come look at these nice earrings…).

7.  Spend Thanksgiving at the ambassador’s house.  Wine and real whipped cream.  What more needs to be said?