Keep Calm and Carry On

I've been trying to use the words of this somewhat recently rediscovered British war poster  to get me through my first few weeks in Mali. The heat, the insomnia, the goodbyes, the uncertainty that I'll be able to pick up where I left off with you when I get back, the adjusting to new customs, and the incredible change of scenery can be overwhelming, but I've been trying to deal with it all in stride.

In perfect honesty though, staying in that store room at the mercy of the first family probably would have been a dealbreaker for me. It's been a dream of mine to work in Africa for what feels like forever, but that experience was enough to make me want to put it on hold and try to come back on my own terms. It was hard enough for me to put a perfectly suitable (actually beyond that, I was havin' a time) life on hold for 6 months, but encountering such hostility on the other side definitely stalled my "integration" into life and work in Mali.

BUT, it's over, I have a fresh start. Seriously, if you hate your family, where else but Africa can you trade them in for a new one? I jest!! I am told it is actually exceedingly difficult to quit your family here. 

Nevertheless, I recognize that it is an incredible experience to live with a local family, since that is not always how it works for expats. Some stay tucked away in fortified compounds with other expats and don't really get to see how the other half lives. With this in mind, this past Sunday evening, after the most awkward and sleepless weekend with my captors first host family, I was blissfully introduced to my new family and my new room.

First the lowdown on the room:
Not only is the room massive, a palace for sure, but I get to sleep in a real bed (well, it's no bed that I left behind in Canada - I'm looking at you Andrew, but a marked improvement), instead of a wafer-thin mattress on a cement floor. The bed also means that my mosquito net can now be properly installed, so I'm no longer getting devoured by potentially-fatal-disease-carriers all night long. I just might avoid malaria after all!  In addition, the door actually closes all the way, and better yet, it locks! The pièce-de-résistence: there's even a fan. When I moved in, I felt like I was on top of the world. Totally double rainbow. Beyond... Anything.... Ever!
I stayed up late on Sunday night to install my things and knocked out for a blissful, uninterrupted 6.5 hours sleep-the most I've had to date!

Monday I decided that since I was getting a second chance of sorts, I should play "la bonne fille" (the good girl), and stop going to open-air bars to drink beer and smoke cigarettes every night to avoid being asked to finance NGOs and university educations and such by my previous family and returned home, mostly promptly, after work and began preparing my water for the week.

Since arriving in Bamako, I've been drinking about 4 litres of bottled water every day, that's two and half 1.5 litre bottles. Not only is my addiction to hydration becoming expensive, I feel like it's really, really, really bad for the environment. Waste removal is such a problem in developing countries, and pretty much every piece of plastic ever used here ends up on the streets, in the gutters, or being burned and turned into the toxic fumes that contribute to Bamako's "delightful" evening aroma.

So I bought some Aquatabs at a pharmacy that are nowhere near the same strength as the ones used in North America by USAID, but I figured they were worth a try. The package said to use 1 tablet for 20 litres of water, or 2 if the water was dirty. My family has pretty clear looking well water, but to be safe I used 2 tablets for 20 litres. I rinsed my used bottles with vinegar and filled them with the treated water then had supper with my family with that smug sense of self-accomplishment that eco-warriors get sometimes. We then stayed up watching the news and a charming Malian soap opera called "3 Wives, 1 Village" and drank tea that was sweetened with a mountain of sugar as it's done here. Seeing that they spoil me rotten, my maman gave me a serving of second supper around 10pm of couscous and a red sauce. I told her that I was full but she insisted, so I ate a little bit then went off to bed, a little bloated, but feeling like nothing could touch me. 

Well, my guts always manage to keep me grounded and I woke up at about 2am and proceeded to spend the rest of Monday night and into Tuesday afternoon in the bathroom with my first, of what I'm sure will be numerous, rounds of being truly (re: non-hyperbolically), violently ill. Having lived many years with the world's most sensitive stomach, I expected a digestive episode such as this (if not an infinity of them), but having successfully navigated my first 2.5 weeks without anything worse than a little heat rash, I have to admit that it got me down. Now I have to undertake the daunting task of figuring out what made me sick, although if it happens again before I finish my 20 litres of treated well water, I'll switch back to bottled water and try to manage the guilt that comes with feeling like every time I buy a case, somewhere in the ocean, a whale dies.

Anyway, it seemed like things were finally going well after enduring what felt like a mountain of setbacks and then I got sidelined once again by my temperamental digestive tract. I am still the same T though, an indomitable optimist, and as a Gemini, capable of analyzing every angle of a situation, so I bucked up and told myself that no, it is not that I am sucking at being in Africa; rather, if I was going to get sick, I actually managed to pick the best time and place to do it.

Let me explain this assertion, and in doing so, I will probably make those of you who are even just a little jealous that I'm enjoying sunshine, sandals and daily averages of about 35 degrees feel a little less so.

Toilets:
Having already amassed a few stamps in my passport, although none from the Great Continent prior to this, I knew that I would have to lower my standards of hygiene when travelling to a developing country. Even so, I was a little...let's say 'disenchanted' with the "facilities" here. People here affectionately call toilets "le trou" (the hole), and will even say "Je vais au trou" (I'm going to the hole) when they get up to go to the bathroom. More often than not, the "bathroom" is outside, the toilet is a hole in the floor (think about it...aiming takes skills) inside an open-air-cement-stall-type-thing, that may or may not have a door, and that is also where you "shower" (via a bucket, natch). I'm not complaining about the showers though, I gotta admit, it is kind of cool showering outside under the stars in November...that is definitely not something I can do at home.

Ok back to the toilets. If there are actual, sit-down toilets, they never have a lid, and toilet-paper? Forget about it. They don't believe it in it here, so it's definitely BYOTP wherever you go. In addition to filling my pockets and purse with TP reserves every morning, I've taken to stuffing each cup with a little bit too so that I'm never, ever caught unawares.

In light of this, I really did find the best possible place to have my first digestive episode. My family's bathroom is inside the house and does have a lidless toilet that usually flushes. If this had happened at the other family's place, I would have had to bring a headlamp and a blanket, and just camp out by the the stinky trou all night with the cockroaches and mosquitoes keeping me company.

In addition, the family were sweet but didn't let me feel too sorry for myself throughout it. In the morning when my maman woke up, I told her what was going on and she rushed out to by me some tonic (sans guilt trip! Buying me tonic would have certainly elicited one from the other family). My darling niece Fatmata reassured me constantly that "ça va passer" (it will pass). But after spending most of the day in my room, my maman came in to tell me that I had to suck it up, come out of my room to eat something, go for a little walk and be social. I did so and it was exactly what I needed.

In short, in a different place, surrounded by different people, this episode could have gone much, much worse. So this week I've been telling myself to keep calm and carry on, and to avoid any temptation to relax my hypervigilence surrounding hygiene. Back to "Purel-ing" my fruit before I peel it. Back to carrying soap with me everywhere and washing my hands obsessively even as certain locals roll their eyes at me.

All in all, despite an imperfect start in my new place, I feel safe there, I'm no longer waking up to mauled feet and hands and my room doesn't transform into an infrared sauna at night like my little oubliette did, so I'm actually, finally, clocking more than 4 hours of sleep most nights. I was starting to feel (and look) like a zombie with bad case of heat rash, but I believe that now I am indeed, finally, on the mend. I think I just might be able to do good work here after all. I'm going to post some pictures after I pick up some stuff to better personalize my new palace. Also, it's a pain in the cul to upload pics with this shoddy internet connection and I don't have the patience to do it today. I blame the anti-malarials. 

Now the lowdown on the family:
They are a delight to be around, and way more my style. The vibe in the house is relaxed, the maids actually seem like they're happy to be alive, there's even a little black kitty who lives in the store room (that's actually used to store things, not to house T) and sneaks in to steal eggs off the little floor stoves that they use here.
My host mom is old enough to be my mom, which pleases me. She spoils me rotten and then acts annoyed and accuses me of being une enfante gâtée (spoiled child). I find that charming

Her daughters, my "older sisters" are pleasant but appropriately ambivalent to my presence, which means I won't be so scrutinized as I was at the other place. My younger sister wants to take me dancing and shopping and asked me to translate the titles of her English-language rap songs into French the other night (that was kinda fun...how do you translate "pimp my ride"?). My older brother is a sweetheart but is mentally retarded and they don't really do "politically correct" in Mali, so in my few short days with them, he's been referred to as an "imbecile" by my boss, a "barbarian" by his mother and an "idiot" by his little sister. I have to try very, very hard not to...umm..."react" inappropriately when they do this.

There are grand-kids, nieces, nephews and babies to play with, including my darling Fatmata, an 8 year old with limitless energy who gets me out running at night and in doing so, I finally learned my numbers in Bambara by counting out my laps. 

The house is still in the lovely "Hippodrome" neighbourhood, and now my walk to work includes a long promenade along la "rue Nelson Mandela" with its bounty of boutiques to look at that make it Lonely-Planet-Guide-mention-worthy.

My maman named me after her maman, so I now go by "Awa Bah". I am told it is a good "Peul" name. Peuls are an ethnic minority that are supposed to have the most beautiful women, so my colleague joked that even as an adoptive Peul, I'd better watch out. That being said, I did not earn any new marriage proposals this week. They will come in good time though, it's how "the game" (did you just lose it? good.) is played here.

In addition, since I've been referring to my new room as a palace, and bragging about how I'm being spoiled by my new family, I've earned myself yet another nickname: "la Princesse Peul". I feel will leave this place with many, many names. Name tally to date: 4.


With that, I'll sign off this post by affirming that I'm going to keep on keeping on, I could not be in Africa after all. That would be bad. Things are on the up and up, I'm getting more settled with each day and if I get sick again, I'll remind myself that at least I don't have to camp out in the trou. I'll post on work next week because I already wrote about it this week in french here (there's pics if you're interested) and I have a Friday night in Bamako to enjoy!

I prefer this one.