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!