the god of languages kicks me in the head

so, i've got a lot to say after my week or so of completely dead communication with the rest of the world and perhaps overly-alive communication with the ~500 people i've met so far. i am currently living with my host family, which basically consists of my brother adama berthé and the family of his aunt (a different family name, 'coulibaly,' the most common name here). because english names all sound alike to the people here, the custom in this program is to receive a malian name by which you will be known for the coming months... the family is the center of everyday life here, and there is an intricate web of jokes and insults that persist between the different families -- if someone is your 'joking cousin' ('cousinage plaisanterie' in french), you basically have an obligation to pretend they are your slave, to which they could respond, for instance, that you and your family eat too many beans and hence fart all the time. the amount of laughter here within the first few seconds of conversation can be daunting considering the speed and volume of the language, but it serves ultimately as a reliever of tension that you find between strangers in the west.

anyway, the name i go by here is Idrissa Berthé, which has become a staple in the vocabulary of the small children that jabber about in the compound where we live. we have started classes in the bambara language ('bamanankan'), but it is much more difficult than i anticipated because the structure is so different... plus the last time i actually started to learn another language was at the beginning of high school, and my background in spanish made french a lot easier than the embarassing charade of forgetfulness that i now practice on a minute-by-minute basis. i think there is actually another blog out there from one of the other people who did this program, and it's all about the language, so i'll only give my three favorite things from the language:
1. to greet someone, you always say 'you and the time of day' - eg. 'you and the morning' or 'you and the evening' - and it's actually insulting to say 'you and...' followed by a different time of day (night when it's really noon or something).
2. instead of spending money, the literal translation is 'to eat money.'
3. to tell someone that they are on time, you actually say 'you are not late' -- this makes so much sense considering the approach to time in mali. the first day in class, several of the teachers stalled for time while we waited for a doctor to come tell us about health -- he came the next day. our bambara teacher told us, 'you have watches, we have time.' when he ran out of ideas to pass the time (his first class wasn't till the next day), he made us all sing the chorus of 'miss american pie' with him, then he left the room.

our first homework assignment, right after i made that terse little previous blog-entry, was to be dropped off in the middle of bamako, the capital city, in groups of two. this girl named amie and i had to find a place called 'center djoliba,' which turned out to be a library/community center... we had to find out what happened there and when it was open on weekdays, then we had to go to the market place and buy something cheap with a little money our academic director (modibo coulibaly) had given us. we bought little handmade passport-sacks to wear around the neck, then we were supposed to make our way back to the hotel by catching a cab. i would say, 'and it was all thanks to our wonderful guide, a proud little man who greeted us and led us around in broken french,' but the truth is if we hadn't run into him in the first few seconds of our journey, we would have been found by a similar guy immediately. the approach to strangers/guests is that they should be treated with the utmost respect and made to feel as welcome as possible. even among the piles of dismembered goat heads and deep-fried alien larva (imagine a grub you find in the dirt and multiply it by at least 6), i have never felt so immediately safe in such a big city -- not even some place much more familar.

a few days later, we visited a small village called sibi: it was only 18 miles away but it took 2 to 3 hours to drive there because it's the rainy season right now (yes, in the desert), and our hotel there consisted of a bunch of straw-roofed huts with beds that were actually big layers of foam on bamboo frames. i will tell more stories about sibi when i can, but for now i'll just say we visited a family compound with a monkey tied to a baobab tree, we were greeted there by this random 11-year-old we'd met in bamako because it turns out his uncle owned the hotel (in addition to a baby crocodile that was chained up behind my room), and at night there was a dance party with some locals where my unpopular (in america) and wild dance skills were finally appreciated with much acclaim, and some of the men also let me play the drums (djembe).

i'm starting to get used to living with my homestay, although last night i did the stupidest thing i've probably ever done in my whole life. the bathrooms here are like 3 walls with a hole to squat over, and you bring in a bucket of well-water to pour over yourself in order to bathe. the smell is bad enough that i've almost thrown up while bathing, but that's not this story. to the point: my brother adama saved the cell phone (everyone here has them) that his last american student purchased, and gave it to me right off the bat. i would give you the number here but last night i was trying to do my business in the stinky-hole-room and the phone lept out of my shirt pocket into the hole of no return. the sound it made can bring tears to my eyes just thinking about it, because i felt so terrible having to tell my brother what happened. the worst thing is how easy it was to get a new one this morning simply because i have so much money compared to the average person here.

anyway the new number is 634-67-03, which is actually only one number off from the old one. the country code for mali is 223, and i think you dial 011 to get out of the states: so...011-223-634-67-03.

next time i hope to write about the traffic here, some intersting stuff to do with health and sanitation, and other incidental observations. for now, it's really wonderful to escape from the rigid grid of american life and learn about some new shapes and how they're described by the people who make them (metaphorically speaking)... but you are all still in my dreams, as they have not yet adjusted to the french+bambara (=frambara) and continue to confuse me when i awake into this new and different world. for those of you who are interested, i get up every morning at 6:30. also, it is very hot (on the cd for my family, i put bob dylan's "it's all over now, baby blue," and the line "crying like a fire in the sun" keeps returning to me...):::;;;///!!!§§§ etc.

also did i mention i am the only male on the trip? i am.

all of my love and best wishes...

k'an bu fo (send my greetings to those you see)...

=idrissa