On what may be my last day in Mali ever, and having just left an angelshare in Hippodrome, I find myself trying to piece together a series of thoughts and memories whose impact on me I’ve not even begun to register.

Although I came to Mali under the pretence of a professional internship which is part of a larger government employment strategy, I think a lot of what I’ve been doing is also a sort of long term and stable traveling. True, I’ve lived in the same house the whole time and I go to work at the same office every day, but I’m still discovering a new culture, learning about different ways of life and seeing unfamiliar sights, which defines travel.

Undoubtedly, this experience has helped me grow both professionally and personally and just as with my prior experiences traveling, I have seen sights and most importantly, lived moments both good and bad here in Mali that will stay with me for the rest of my days.  I believe that traveling ends up being a collection of moments that ultimately impact, change, affect, inspire and at times, devastate a person.

Sometimes during my bored moments, I’ve periodically flipped aimlessly through my collection of digital photographs but I noticed that the longer I stayed here, the further away all of those captured moments seemed to be.  I forget what it feels like to be cold, to see an overcast sky, to cook for myself, to sleep without a mosquito net and to wear closed-toe shoes. Slowly but surely over the course of my time here, “home” became a collection of moments in my seemingly distant past that were pushed aside to make room for the new ones I was to experience.

These new moments were amazing in the truest sense of the word; they left me shocked and awed and not always in a good way. Some were firsts. Some made me say WTF?! Some were “a-ha moments” where I learned a lesson.  Some moments I really could have done without. Finally, some were downright devastating, but I still consider myself fortunate and better off for having lived the lot. I will now try to do my best to describe my most memorable moments in Mali.

Firsts

This was my first time on African soil, so there were a lot of somewhat arbitrary firsts (i.e. using a trou, washing my hands with the kettle, drinking bissap juice, wearing a pagne, eating sheep liver and fish heads etc.). I decided to pare down my firsts to the ones that were most important to me.

• Celebrating Tabaski with my local colleague’s family was the first time I saw my food (a sheep) walking, prayed over, butchered and in my mouth within a matter of hours.  I appreciated the respect that my hosts paid the animal and the comfort I felt in knowing with certainty that he had just met his maker without suffering.
  

• The second time I went to my sanity-saving paradise of Siby, I rock climbed like a boss, despite being terrified for the first time in almost a decade.  This challenge was as much mental as it was physical, but it felt incredible and shortly after I saw my first composting toilet.
  
  

• My third time in Siby after having rock climbed the previous day, I biked a total of 34km in the blistering heat to a beautiful waterfall and freshwater pool and then got to cruise the last downhill 3km at an exhilarating break-neck speed (sorry Mom). I’ve never biked so long and so far and not to mention on such a hot, and I was amazed at how little I complained how I was not very sore the next day. Also on the bike ride I saw and heard my first cicadas. Cicadas are significant to me because I went through a bug phase as a kid and I remember wanting to travel to Africa to see and hear them.

WTF Moments

When divergent cultures collide, there’s bound to be some wires crossed, or things so strange and bewildering that they make you say WTF?! These moments can be endlessly frustrating, scary, confusing, but with a “meh, Africa” shoulder shrug and robust sense of humour, they can easily become hilarious stories to tell for years to come. A lot of these moments became banal to me and it was only after I mentally removed myself from the situation could I appreciate how strange they were. These are some of my most incredible WTF moments:

• The famous cursed panties hilarious misunderstanding.
  
  

• Today while leisurely eating breakfast in the court yard of a friend's NGO compound, a person (couldn't tell if it was a man or worman because all I could see was 2 eyes peering creepily from behind a slat in the fence) felt compelled to tell me that my pagne was pretty, but that it was an old one and then carry on being creepy.
  
  

• Seeing a baby pick up a kitten that had worms coming out of its fur and put it in his mouth while the adults around him laughed.
  

• Seeing 7 people cram into a baobab tree to pray while in a clearing that seemed to be at the end of the world.
  

• The giant, horned cow that wandered up down the street I worked on would sometimes just chill out on the meridian. The juxtaposition of a pastoral animal laying on the concrete partition of a busy street with cars and motos whizzing by would always make me stop and chuckle.

• Some families do their washing, cooking and evidently their butchering in the street instead of the court yard in their house. This means they dump all their waste water into the street which in turn forms trenches. One day, instead of having to step over a trench flowing with grey, soapy water, I had to dodge a river of blood on my way to work.
  
  

• 30 sheep tied to the top of a bus on the way to Soké and Kemeni that seemed oddly nonchalant about it.
  

Come on up, the weather is fine!

A-Ha!

Part of intercultural learning is well, learning.  These are a few of my moments where a light bulb went off.

• A month into my mandate, when my bosses’ car broke down on the side of the road, miles from nowhere, Solo, I learned that one should always travel with extra water, snacks and a jacket in Africa. Although I got cocky a couple months later and stayed in my friend’s village too late before jumping in a sotrama without enough water to survive a disaster and lo and behold, the thing broke down. Luckily, after an hour, and just before it got no-electricity-around-for-miles dark it got back up and running.
  
  

• Listen up locavores: it’s not always good knowing where your food comes from. I once accompanied my favourite maid to the market where I saw the meat what would become my lunch on a table completely covered in flies which all scattered in a flurry when the butcher began to hack the meat. He also chopped up an organ that I couldn’t identify but the look of which made my stomache turn. Finally, I saw where what I’m sure is the source of my perma-bloat, palm oil, comes from: giant metal barrels with a tap that I’ve only every seen to hold aircraft fuel.

• I couldn’t understand why the maids in my family and other’s wouldn’t respond to me when I greeted them, nor did I get why they would just stare at me seemingly mystified. I thought, they live in Bamako, surely they’ve seen toubabs before. After scaring the bejebus about of a young maid during her first week with my family simply by force of being pale, I learned that a lot of the hired help come from little far away villages where it’s quite possible that they have never seen a white person.  This can be cross-posted with devastating moments, because they’re usually just kids who have been sent to the big city by their parents to basically work as indentured labourers for slightly better off families.
  
  

• Finally figuring out what Papou’s hand gestures and grunts meant. He is wicked funny with a jovial spirit that kept the mood in the house perpetually light and I will miss him dearly for that.
  
  
  
  

Not so much a Time

On the whole, I've had an icredible time in the purest sense of the word, but there were a few moments I could have done without, such as:

• Multiple sessions of repeat visits to the trou.
  
  

• Soké and Kemeni pink eye/chest infection onslaught where a bus delay almost prevented my seeking treatment in Bamako.
  
  

• My wipeout on the soccor field where I ran. I tore up both my knees and hurt my wrist badly. I couldn’t get any reprieve either because finding ice in this country is a Sisyphean task.  It was finally 24 hours later that I got to ice my hand and get the swelling down.
  
  
  
• Thinking that "brousse" was "brusque" for a month and that "sotrama" was inexplicably "outre-mer" for 2 months, epic French fail.
  
  

Hidden Devastation

Mali is a desperately poor country, and that poverty is devastating, but it doesn't meann that life skips a beat here. Things still move and life carries on despite the hardships and as part of an adaptive strategy I became quickly vaccinated against the devestation I was seeing. Things devasted me, but I hid it and just kept going.

Nevertheless, certain sights and moments would break through the wall I put up to be able to carry on with my work without being perpetually an emotional wreck if I truly sat down and processed all that I was seeing. Some of those moments were too devastating for this blog which I've tried to keep light, but these are some of the moments that threw me off, but ultimately made for an amazing and eye-opening experience that steeled my resolve to be involved in this field of work.

• My host mom did a very good job of not trying to treat me like a walking dollar sign. More importantly, she treated me the same as most my other "family" members and did not hesitate to take the piss out of me. One day she asked me to call my taximan friend, and I did but warned her that he might be out of her price range for the kind of trip she was wanting to do. She asked for a ball park and when I gave it, she told me in a defeated tone "I can't afford that, I'm not like you." I knew in the back of my mind that there were vast disparities in wealth between the two of us, and that's the only time she ever called it to attention.
  
  
  

•  Between the "toubabu! donne-moi le 100 francs", finding out you overpaid for something after the fact and a few sketchy taximen, it's hard to not to be suspicious of being fleeced sometimes. After a swim one night, I hailed a taxi with my friend and explained that there would be 2 stops in Hippodrome, negotiated a price and off we went. After the first stop he told me he didn't understand that there would be 2 and that I needed to pay more. Not at all in the mood for this I argued with him and it got so intense a guard came out to see what was going on. I finally finished by insulting the guy and storming out of the car to walk home. I took two steps and realised that I had been fighting with an impoverished local over the equivalent of 50 cents and had ultimately devastated myself with my lousy behavior. To make matters worse, he insisted that I get back in and drove me as far as the main drag. While I understand that it's not good to train locals to depend on handouts from toubabs, I didn't need to get so upset, especially considering that the 50 cents he was trying to squeeze out of me wouldn't change his situation in any way, and that made me feel hopeless, thus devastated.
  

• A colleage recanted a conversation with her host family:
  Family: "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
  Colleague: "I have one brother."
  Family: "Just one brother? What happens if one of you dies?"
  Colleague: "Well, babies don't really die in Canada."
  Family: Perplexed stare... "What do you mean babies don't die? Babies die here all the time!"
  
  
  
  
  In sum, it's been a wild ride of incredible moments that will stick with me and provide me with stories for years to come. There were hard moments, moments I could have done without and moments that brought a mist before my eye, but that just means that I got the exact experience that I signed up for.I'll miss this complicated, bewildering and at times, devastating place, but I'll be back again I'm sure...inshallah.
  
  Total Marriage Proposals: 20
  

(Mis) Adventures in Eating

By popular request, I'm blogging about fish heads this week instead of my mandate. Ask and ye shall receive:

As I've alluded to before, one of the most important aspects of my work in international cooperation in Mali is "intercultural learning" which is centered around living with an adoptive Malian family. For me, it has proved to be at times the most and least enjoyable aspect of my life as an international stagiaire.

Although the families we are placed are slightly better off than the average Malian family, the conditions there are a far cry from the air-conditioned houses with pools that ex-pats can afford. In short, living with a family provides a first hand glimpse into the every day realities of many Malians. Still, the situation is somewhat artificial, since interns get their own room and bed which is already different than the situation for most Malians who share rooms and beds, if they have a bed at all.

Not all interns have had the same experience as me, but I did have a hard time transitioning from living independently in Canada where my only obligations to others were to feed my cat and to be considerate to my roommates, to being part of a family in a société collective (as opposed to individuelle like home, thanks pre-departure intercultural sensitivity training!) where decisions are meant to be made and actions undertaken with everyone else in mind.

The living conditions in my first family were intolerable to me, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to do 5 months living in a dark, dirty store room with a door that didn't shut all the way. Still, the family spoke French really well, there were cute kids and babies to play with and they cooked me a big plate of eggs for breakfast every morning, so there was good and bad in that situation. Having to change families meant that I had been in Mali for almost a month and still didn't feel "settled", which definitely affected my productivity. 

My next and current family were much better equipped to host an international worker, but I still had issues having my daily needs met, specifically a good breakfast. They seem to be an afterthought here, and most time and effort is dedicated to supper where the portions are enormous. Usually, the family eats so late that by the time they bring me my pot, I've "pushed through" my earlier hunger and don't have much of an appetite anymore. I tried unsuccessfully to explain that a big breakfast before work was more important to me than a huge supper right before bed. Eventually, they started saving a portion of the day's lunch and served it to me warmed up the next morning. This was not my favourite thing, but it more or less worked until the maid brought me cold faroké. I took one bite and vommed before breakfast and then snapped and told my family and my boss no more, I'm buying my own breakfasts *Shut it down!*So it only took 3.5 months, but finally I've been given an extra 50 cents a day to buy my own breakfasts. 50 cents gets me one croissant or pain au chocolate, 2 slices of laughing cow cheese, or 3 hard boiled eggs and a stick of bread. It more or less works.

As for my room, it's a good size and a nice place to retreat to. If I didn't have my room, I would probably go crazy. That being said, the room is still a big change in its own right. There is no screen on the window so mosquitoes have been a problem the whole time and it faces the court yard, so it's noisy and pretty much everyone can see what I'm doing in there at any given time. The lack of privacy bothered me at first, but now I don't care except for when I'm changing. Also, it's stifling hot in my room since its position in the house means it's hard to get any kind of a cross-wind going. The plus side of this is that now the glacier showers don't bother me...I even look forward to them. Finally, there was no problem adapting to the people in my family, because they're just lovely. As with any relationship, it took me a while to trust them, but when I did I realised that they were good friends and great fun.

Evidently, I've adopted the "meh, Africa" shrug coping mechanism where you shrug off things that might otherwise bother you because the other option is not being in Africa, which would be worse. 

Before anyone accuses me of going native though, I must admit that for me, the food has been one of the hardest things to get used to. Mali is known for having some of the worst food in the region. For example, I once heard a Sénégalais proudly announce that they don't have the somehow sloppy yet gelatinous, blackish/green blob food called thon there. As with everything, I did a lot of shoulder shrugging to accept having someone else cook for me and never the things I wanted, and I've spent much time here fantasizing about what the first thing is I'll cook for myself when I get home. I keep craving borscht with a healthy dollop of sour cream which probably means I'm deficient in something found in those two things...or that there has been some latent, as of yet undiscovered Russian incursion into my lineage.

All meals are prepared outside and usually eaten by hand communally,(although separated by gender) out of a big bowl, but my family gives me my own pot with a lid and a spoon, which is good, because I'm not hardcore and I don't really like eating with my hand, especially if I've had to wash with just the kettle. 

Breakfasts are sparse, if they happen at all. Lunches for my family are always rice and sauce, but way too much of it and I get a food baby every time I eat anything with rice in this country. I buy my own lunch most days since I'm at work which means a huge portion of my budget has gone to Le Relax and Burger-Time. Snacks are purchased from nice ladies on the side of the road and suppers are by far the best and worst, depending on the night, allow me to explain:

Suppers in my family are usually some kind of starch (eg: potatoes, beans, sweet potatoes, and cassava root or pasta) with one or two chunks of sheep meat or a piece of fish and a sauce, typically a little too heavy on the palm oil and salt, but tasty enough. Other times, it's a grain (eg: couscous, fonio, thon, attieké) with the same accompaniment as the starch. Rarely, I get salad, nems, meat and peas. For the most part, I eat fairly well compared to other stagiaires, so I don't go out for supper too often. There is however, one problem and that is what has come to be my least favourite thing in the world: fish heads
 

The first fish head I got was some slimy bottom feeder served with rice for lunch after I'd been with the family for only about a month. I lifted the lid, looked inside, closed the lid and momentarily pondered packing my bags and getting on the next flight out. My maman was sitting right beside me, so I did my best work on the thing and tried to sneakily put the lid back on and steal away. She opened the pot and remarked that I had barely eaten the thing, then picked it up and sucked all the skin off of it and dug out all the organs including the eyes. Her tenacity impressed me, but imagining myself doing it made my guts turn.

Prior to that, I had done my best to eat all that she put in front of me, but I just couldn't do it this time, and was hoping that she would interpret my not eating the fish head as a sign that I didn't like it. 

It didn't work, and much to my chagrin, I was given many more fish heads. I did my best to eat them, despite being put off, especially once I had a Malian tell me that giving some one a fish head was a sign of respect usually reserved for the male head of the family. This made me feel uncomfortable, since I already get to skip the eating order hierarchy by being pasty and I didn't want to seem like I was eschewing some sign of cultural respect.

Nevertheless, I suspect he might have been pulling my leg, because the other day one of the kids brought me a pot with a fish tail on potatoes but my mom called her back. She swapped my pot for hers saying that she didn't like the head....

Food in Pictures:

The kitchen

The stove

Breakfast: 

Céréal, usually made with corn, rice or millet and eaten with these big, plastic spoons.
This also doubles as dinner on Sunday.

Lunch/Somtimes my Breakfast: 

Faroké (sp?) dark green sauce made with shea butter and ground seeds, usually palatable but has the texture of sand and will break you if ingested cold.

Every Sunday lunch feast: riz au gras, or Sénégalais rice cooked in oil with fish and veg.

Lunch en brousse=fish and spaghetti.

Ubiquitous sauce arachide, or peanut sauce

Poulet yassa from a street stall, that's a chicken's spinal column in the foreground

Poulet yassa from a nice sit-down place in Djenné. Notice the lack of spinal column.

Fish and Chips, Dogon style.

What's for Dinner?

Beef+deep fried plantains+onions=not bad.

Thon, or tion? Pronounced like "toe" is the bane of most stagiaire's existence.
More common en brousse, and my family hates it anyway, so I wasn't subjected to it that often.
This kind with vegetables wasn't so bad, but I couldn't eat the kind with fish.

One time after couscous, I got a second supper of beets and beans.
Any kind of insoluble fibre makes T very happy.

Tasty sweet potatoes and cassava, one of my favs.

First supper back from Dogon was my fav: nems on salad :)

Fish Heads for Supper: A Cautionary Tale
(go on, click the link. You'll enjoy it)

Fish head on deep fried plantains and onions. This is a "capitaine"
or "nile perch". Tasty enough when not in head form, but I
did the best I could.

Dear real family, next time you try to say I'm a princess, remember this image.

Fish head on salad with a side of bread....wtf?! *shrug*.

This kind of creepy bottom feeder  which was served on rice was the first kind of fish head I received, but I didn't take a pic then. This one was served with red sauce and bread.  I didn't even try to eat this one, this picture broke my camera and I dreamt about fish heads that night...only 2 more weeks.

Finally, after yet another unfortunate and still ongoing digestive episode last week, I refused the last fish head I was offered. I guess there is an upside to being sick.

In [sic] Brousse

I'll try to keep this post short and sweet so you can get to the good stuff: the pics!

I've spent the last two weeks roadtripping to the country equally for work and pleasure. Being in brusque "brousse" is kind of like roughing it, or camping even, since there's not always running water, electricity, or a trou even. What was supposed to be my second sojourn "en brousse"* in Zantiébougou, turned into an extended stay in the well-equipped Bougouni team's house, and it was there that I had yet another hilarious misadventure.

* I have since learned that when peole were talking about going to the country or the bush, they were saying "brousse" as opposed to "brusque", like I originally thought. A linguistic, hilarious misunderstanding on my part.

Last Thursday, I decided to take advantage of the clear village air and go for a run through the countryside after a particularly long day surveying shea butter co-op members under the hot sun thinking it would re-energize me before this pre-holiday feast the NGO in Bougouni was organizing. I set off down a road that looked straight with the idea that I would just run straight for 20 minutes, then turn around and run straight back. The narrow village roads started to meander, so I tried my best to make some mental "cairns" (re: a crooked tree, a giant rut in the road, a particularly giant pile of donkey poop etc.) to remember how to get back. I did right by myself until I was about 3/4 of the way back and took a wrong turn. I ran in circles a couple times to try to retrace my steps to get back on track and on my third passing a group of kids started chanting "Toubabu, perdu! Toubabu, perdu!" (White person is lost! It loses the lovely rhyming couplet in translation sadly) at me.

Embarrassed, I realised that finding my way back was harder than following Allan Kane's scrambling directions and just ran until I saw something recognizable enough that I could stand in front of and wait for a pick up...and to think that I momentarily pondered not bringing my third (I'm hard on phones apparently) unlocked Nokia. I eventually got a hold of a colleague and told her I was standing in front of a hill, a cellphone tower and a building with "Kremlin City" of all things written on it. She then dispatched the watchman to pick me up with his moto. As we rode back to the house, which took a remarkably long time, I couldn't help but feel a little proud of myself that I had gone all that distance on foot. There's a good side to almost everything.

Obviously, my misadventure became the joke of the night and everyone laughed at me while dined on this dish I actually love called "ouijila", that consists of seasoned dough balls that are dipped into a tasty red sauce. Seriously, it's a big deal that I found local some food that I like, I could probably write a blog post just on the food here...it takes some getting used to and it's definitely tremendo-meatatarian.

On Friday night, while I sipped whiskey and played crib around a fire just days before the winter solstice (trip-out), I told my gang  about my running "misstep" and the kids chanting "Toubabu, perdu" at me and this snow-balled into an even bigger joke, that now includes a song. I should invest in a compass...

Below are some pics of my countryside adventures. I'll post some pics of Bamako when I have more. I've only just begun to explore this massive, crowded, complicated but amazing city. In the meantime, enjoy "In Brousse!"

On the way out of the city,  I "reversed window-shopped"(!?) some shoes.

First time out of Bamako!

To Ouellessébougou to celebrate Lisa's 24th.

On the way to downtown Zantiébougou.

Downtown Zantiébougou, it's bumpin'.

The Bani.

Bridge over the Bani.

The hills around Siby.

Ranch house where we stayed.

Crib in the morning. One day, I will have played crib on every continent.

On my first hike in Africa, just outside of Siby.

The gang in front of the most epic of rock windows.

View from the window overlooking a plateau.

We made it to the waterfall.

Wicked sandal tan or layers upon layers of dirt?

We're watching the little fish nibble our feet, it tickled!

Swimming in December, believe it.

Can't get enough of African sunsets.

Well on my way to becoming a tremendo-meatatarian: here, dinner is sheep liver and ribs from a street stall.