Well, its official, I’m the worst blogger ever. I’ve been in Mali for more than two months and not written one entry! Fortunately, though, I’m an excellent journal keeper, so the plan is to copy down my journal entries, adding on any extra thoughts along the way. I’ve got 2 months of Mali to describe, so lets get down to business.
Note : quotation marks on the french keyboard look like this «… »
Memorable Journal Quotes and Entries :
9.8.11 – 9.10.11 :
My first 3 days in Bamako, which I spent staying at a hotel with the other 4 girls, exploring the city every day with Sounkalo our coordinator and Sidney, our connection back in America who accompanied us for the first couple days.
« Bamako, Bamako, having fun with Sounkalo. »
« THIS PLACE IS ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY THE MOST INTERESTING, FRIENDLY, MOST FANTASTIC PLACE I HAVE EVER BEEN EVER!! »
« At lunch I ordered pigeon, but sadly, and honestly a little to my relief, they were all out. Apparently pigeon is a popular choice on the streets of Bamako… who would have guessed? »
« I’ve decided that the Coke in Bamako is much better than Coke back home, which may be due to the old fashion bottle that it comes in. »
« After lunch, while Sounkalo, Hope and I waited for the driver to arrive, we walked up and down an ordinary, or in my opinion extraordinary, but in reality ordinary Bamako street. People were outside shucking corn, playing with rocks, building, balancing huge tubs of bananas on their heads… everything I would picture for a stereotypical African street. Oh, and have I mentioned how friendly everyone is? Especially the children, they stare at us and smile really big which makes me smile like a foreign weird! »
« Tonight we visited a polygamous family, a man, his two wives, and their many children and extended family. They were so welcoming, even though all of us could only barely communicate in our broken french… the tour of their house was very cool because, if the first story was not beautiful enough, there was an identical second story for the second wife! As the man of the house, Danttouma, said, if you have two wives, you buy two of everything, three wives, three, and so on… After the tour we all ate dinner together in a circle on the floor. First, one of the young men came around with a bowl and a pot and poured water on our hands as we each washed up. Then, we each got a chunk of bread and scooped up beans from the big center bowl. After, we ate small pancake-looking creations with honey, then an orange for dessert which I could absolutely not figure out how to peel. It was different than in America… I won’t even try to explain. A young man had to peel it for me... lets move on.
After saying goodbye to this very hospitible family who kept repeating « I am so, so happy. », and inviting us to come again, we went to dinner. What? I know. Apparently Sounkalo told the family we would only need drinks, and we already had reservations for this restaurant, so off we went... At dinner we drilled Sounkalo with questions, a common occurance so far. Then, we left and walked down the stone streets where a live band was playing instruments that sounded somewhat familiar, but looked like something I’d never seen before, like a sphere on the ground with a long peice sticking up with strings, played like a harp.»
« Even though polygamous families are somewhat common here, it’s not like every family is polygamous. Its also perfectly common for a man to be in a monogomous relationship with a wife of his choosing. That is also something I learned tonight, a lot of Malians do not choose their spouse and/ or, when they marry they do not move out of their parents house, especially with the eldest son who is seen as a leader of the family. Of course, this is not always the case. »
« There is a lot of litter in the places I’ve visited. This is something I was not necessarily expecting. Also, flies swarm a lot when we eat outside, how much do you wanna bet I’ll accidentally eat one sometime soon. Also, driving here is crazy. Many people drive motorcycles, speeding along, swerving between cars… and I have yet to see a helmet! Men, women, even babies ride on these things, 1, 2 or 3 at a time. Also, in cars, I don’t really see much seatbelt usage. »
« Today we met a man named Aziz who works for Le Falculté du Medicin, a university for medicine… he gave us a tour of some important monuments, like sculptures of previous Malian dictators and presidents, and french governers, and the Malian National Park. All of his explanations were in french, and I did my best to follow, but got lost every now and then. School in October is going to be very interesting! At lunch Aziz asked if any of us were married and kept saying « vite marraige ! » (get married quickly.) » (Ive heard this a lot since then, too.)
I love hearing all this! So fascinating, and wonderful to be in a different place where every is brand new!
ReplyDeleteAny news on family?