Oubliette

Woo hoo! I can finally blog again. Our internet at the office is spotty and there's frequent power outages, but after a third visit from the repairman this week, it seems like we're back in business. 

So I finished my "integration week" on Saturday, which consisted of Bambara lessons, a lot of sitting around, Tabaski and no talk of mandates. There were lots of fun times with the other interns and the manager of the Mali Ka So Hostel, including watching live music at Le Diplomate, a typical Côte d'Ivoirian supper which included Guinness, a new nickname for me: "la marraine" (godmother), which accorded me the right to issue "fines" that were typically paid in rounds of Castel, the "Queen of beers." Far from preparing us for the realities of the living conditions of an average Malian, the hostel spoiled us with its proper showers, fans and sit-down toilets.

Saturday the director picked us up from the hostel and took us to the office first. There, he explained there were some "problems" with our host families and that he had only met them the night before. My Canadian colleagues' was impassable, so he would now be staying with a local colleague's family. He said my family seemed nice and the house was great and in a good neighbourhood very close to work. BUT, my room was small, very, very small, and that if he was saying it was small, I would probably not approve. He went so far as to call it a prison, but I think of it more as an 'oubliette':


Oubliette - (noun, french) a little place of forgetting. A small, windowless room where someone is locked away, forgotten, left to go mad.

There is one plus side to this situation:  my best marriage proposal to date came from my host-mom's 3 year old nephew. Malians have a tradition of joking called "cousinage" and one of these jokes is that grandmas are the "wives" of their grandsons, so this little guy told his grandma that she was no longer his wife and that I was going to be because I was prettier. That takes my tally up to 5.

Nevertheless, the director promised me that I would not have to spend the next five months in a prison, but since he already paid the family for 10 days of lodging, he would take his time and find me a good host family with a proper room. In addition, I've learned a little more about the work that I'm doing here, and it includes negotiating a 7 figure contract from the EU...not something that should be done while living in a dungeon I think. Yesterday he told me that he had found one with a room that is at least "4 times" bigger than my oubliette and that I'll move in this Sunday, inshallah (if God/Allah wills it so, as they say here). 

This incident has got me down a little since I'm still adjusting to the rhythm of life here and I miss you all terribly; however, if this little drama follows the typical hand I'm dealt, I am very hopeful that things will go up from here. Revisiting my first day in Europe where I was so nervous that I puked all over the Frankfurt airport and the entire time on the plane from there to Zurich and then was left to wander terrified around a train station in Basel this was after being shoved into the cargo part of the train by some unhelpful locals and screamed at by the conductor) for 4 hours, feeling like I was going to spend the night there.
With a first day in Europe like that, it could only go up from there, and it did. I ended up having the most terrific time. Ever the optimist and in light of that experience, I’m banking on a sea change here in Mali.

I am crossing my fingers for a joyous introduction to my new family on Sunday and by the end of next week, the director promises to have our mandates finalized so I will write about that then, Allah and internet willing!

Happy Tabaski!

Today we  celebrated la fête du mouton, or Tabaski, or what I've been calling the sheep festival with the family of one of my Malian colleagues, Khady.

In preparation for Tabaski, there were hundreds of sheep rounded up at the market to be brought home for the feast. I tried to get a picture of all the sheeps hanging out in the market, oblivious that they were about to become a lot of people's dinners, but we only passed by in taxis and with the way les taximan drive here, it would have been a blur or white fur, red sand and wood stalls.

Khady stopped by our hostel and helped us get a taxi (re: negotiated a fair price for us toubabu) and showed the way by cruising through the refreshingly empty streets on her moto. I feel like I actually got to see the city today since I wasn't clutching the passenger handle on the verge of cardiac arrest while we rode. On the way we passed closed boutiques, empty street stalls and a soccor field that was full of mostly men and boys uniting for an extra, holiday prayer.

 Here we are in our adoptive family's neighbourhood. Tires take a beating, natch.

 Oh Hai! (He has no idea what is about to go down).

The men pray before cutting the sheep's throat. The  head of the famiily seemed happy that I wanted to take a picture.

I turned my camera off right before the act, and he told me I should photograph the next one, because that is how it's done in the Muslim world and it is important to them, so I took a picture of the next sheep meeting his maker at my host's urging.

In short, the next photos may offend vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians, flexetarians and basically anyone besides tremendo-meatarians, but it was an important part of the experience.

They pour water on the wound to make sure all the blood is gone.

Now that the sheep are dead, the men's work is done for the day (besides prayer) and the women's work begins and continues throughout the entire day. Here we're cleaning the fat from the meat.

Skewering sheep livers.

Our first mouton dish of the day.

Lunch was pasta mixed with sheep and vegetables that you eat with your hands.

The ladies dismissed us after lunch and we spent the rest of the afternoon talking with the men and playing with the kids.

The two in the back were particularly fun. 

Late in the afternoon, when the heat was its most stifling, we moved outside for a "porch party."

For supper, they gave us an entire leg to split three-ways, a massive tray of bleach-water-rinsed salad and french fries. Evidently, we were really excited about the latter. 

 In sum, the three of us were treated with the exceptional hospitality that Mali is famous for. This invitation turned into other invitations, this visit turned into a visit at a neighbor's which turned into more invitations for dinner, rides, nights out in Bamako, possible post-mandate escort to Timbuktu and as always, marriage proposals.

Marriage proposals to date: 2

Hey, That's no Way to Say Goodbye

I hate goodbyes. They're always hard, even if it's just for a little while, and for happy reasons. Last week was one of goodbyes to the people (and furbaby) I love, the little creature comforts of home and to the life I know in Canada. When I first found out that I was going to work in Mali, I was thrilled, but it was tempered by the dread of letting go of the things I had come to cherish in Calgary. Having left the coast only six months ago, I was still in the honeymoon period of my life back in Alberta. Although, I think the beautiful fall we were having might have made things seem sunnier than the harsh reality of staring down a long, dark and cold Albertan winter. This hesitation slowly gave way to excitement for new things: new food, new friends, new work, new sights, sounds, and as always with developing countries, smells.

Still, when the time came to say goodbye, I felt like I was on the verge of leaving an angel's share in Canada. I did not, and still don't know exactly what the work is that I'll be doing in this country, what my living arrangements will be like and how I'll get along with my adoptive Malien family. So this Friday, as soon as the seatbelt sign in the airplane turned off, I turned to music to console myself and the universe (or the music gods, or Steve Jobs?) responded in the most appropriate way. I set my ipod to shuffle and out of the over 7000 songs, it chose a tune by one of the loves of my life, Leonard Cohen, to play first. A poet for the ages, the words of his song "Hey, That's no Way to Say Goodbye" offered me some peace. Have a taste:

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.


The flights were long, delayed, longer, then delayed again, but finally in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I arrived on Malien soil. Sédou, the director of the organization I'm working for, picked us up from the airport and drove us to the hostel where we will stay for our "integration week". Sleep was almost an exercise in futility, as roosters were crowing, the heat was stifling, and the sun was rising by the time I finally knocked out for 5 short hours of much needed rest (T does not sleep in airplanes, and only barely in Moroccan hotels while transiting). After a lovely lunch time breakfast, Sédou picked us up again and drove us around Bamako. The streets were crowded (on dirait la foule), dirty, polluted, but alive with relaxed-looking people and, curiously, sheep. I am told that this Wednesday is the annual "Sheep Festival", so women were getting their hair done, and sheep were being collected, herded and even transported in the back seat of a car to be ready for the occasion.

Tomorrow I will visit the office where I will be working, meet the colleagues that I will be working with and hopefully get a clearer vision of my mandate. In the meantime, I have to work on something that is almost has hard as saying goodbye for me, and that's getting a good night's rest. But first, I am told by my Canadian colleague that on fait la fête de la bière (we drink a little Malien beer and be merry)! Pics next post :)

One More Cup of Coffee Before I Go

So I'm sitting here in my room, totally jacked on caffeine and putting off packing for yet another night.
This whole Mali, Africa internship happened so fast that I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around where to even begin preparing for 6 months abroad.
Whats more, when I think about the timing of this opportunity and how everything kind of needed to happen exactly as it did, my head spins. I had to not find a job on the coast, or overseas right after graduating, so that I could move to Calgary, make enough coin to go volunteer in Haiti, and in doing so, I made my application stronger. Then on the coattails of an amazing summer, I had to not have my government contract extended, so that I'd be free to apply on this internship which was referred to me by an organization offering a different internship that I applied for earlier in the year, but did not even get an interview. Everything just kind of clicked, and all in good time...groovy!

In all honesty, I'm already about 3/4 packed, I have a subletter, catsitters, carsitter, banjositter, sweatersitter, automatic loan payments set up, been vaccinated, had training and had crucial, albeit far too brief, visits.

I'm incomprehensibly excited, nervous, curious, terrified, a tiny bit sad, but 98% thrilled that I leave in 4 days. It is the longest I will have ever been gone, and the farthest away. At the same time, it is only 6 short months, (5 as a worker, then an extra month as a wanderer), and I know that the time will fly. I'm looking forward to learning, exploring, changing, and experiencing it all: the wonderment of being in a new land with people who don't do things like at home; the at times, crippling loneliness that comes from being surrounded by the unfamiliar; the devastation of missing loved ones and knowing that they are so very far away; but most importantly, the excitement of new friends, food, habits, hobbies and horizons.

Time to use what's left of this caffeine rush and do something productive.