(sanankoroba days 3 & 4 are just not gonna make it to the internet... sorry) note: for those who want to see a schedule for the rest of my journey, just skip down to the paranthesis in the fourth full paragraph after this goofy little definition nonsense here...
BAMANANKAN LESSON:
"tubabu" - (noun) french person (e.g. "tubabukan" - the french language). used coloquially to refer to any and all white people in mali, most often employed by hordes of children chanting in unison as they follow me down the street.
today i had a much-needed, other-male interaction in my own language - with Dylan Something-or-other, a fulbright scholar studying tourism and economics who was taken under the wing of our academic director, modibo coulibaly, until he found a proper place to stay. in discussing his daunting research topic, he and i got to talking about the wide range of expectations that people here anticipate we, as foreigners, will have of the local culture. among those who want to make friends with tourists for financial reasons, it seems like two distinct categories emerge: (1) those who play to the western comforts of restaurant styles, bathroom standards, speaking english, musical taste, and a huge list of other more nuanced western standards that have permeated this culture and come to hold a certain class-connotation (for some); then - (2) those who anticipate a (usu.) white traveler's search for an authentic cultural experience. this category consists largely of vendors in the artisana marketplace in downtown bamako, ready to convince me of the authenticity of their masks, drums, calibashes, shoes, clothes, etc. (as a side note, i'd love to know where these products come from, what the rate of profit is if the artisans are villagers in more remote/rural areas... stuff like that. many things in the aforementioned artisana are obviously made then and there, and the artisans are proud to present themselves as the crafter of their products; others, however, are more obscure about their definition of "authentic.")
this is not a formal academic paper, and i recognize that i'm taking plenty of liberties: all tourists are white, the local population is represented only by those who play to the tourists as a financial opportunity, etc. but this (the latter, esp) has been the case for me very often as a white traveler in the large capital city, encountering strangers with whom i interact only in the postcolonial language, which i don't even speak too well to begin with...
anyway, the best and most appropriate example of westernized temptation that exists over here is the restaurant "amandine" where we go to eat after many of our group excursions. it is very enjoyable: the food is pretty good, it's air conditioned, it's easy to buy not-plain-bread breakfast food for the next day at the bakery there... (the funniest thing to me is the name "amandine." although it is a french word, the similar sounding phrase "a man di," in bamanankan, means "it is not good.") at the same time that i love to hate some of the places we SIT students tend to go for familiar comforts (see also: grocery store entry), i do find myself with a real desire to escape every once in a while, which lets me know, rightly, just how entrenched my own identity can be, drowning as it sometimes does in difference. it is also important to note -- to myself as much as to the audience -- that this doesn't have to be a bad thing: it is liberating to be able to pick and choose what i like from each culture, but i suppose i am always aware that even that is a privilege in and of itself.
on the other end of the spectrum is the kind of stuff i've been reading up on lately in hopes to become more clear on what i'd like to research for my independent study project (brief recap, for those who don't know: school ends at the end of next week or so, and we leave for the 'grand excursion' on oct. 23 for 10 days in mopti, djenne, the dogon country, and segou; after that, the one month of independent research begins, where i'll be on my own until we reconvene to present projects, say good bye to families, then i skip the plane ride and hopefully go fight terrorists in timbuktu for a couple days). what i've been reading concerns the various methods for rural development, as implemented or studied (or both) by privileged members of the northern hemisphere.
this is all to say that i do have to navigate my way through the various branches of stereotypical traveller-experiences to find exactly what i, as an individual, am really doing here. i am finally making decisions about what i can hope to accomplish while i am here, both for myself and for the people who so graciously welcome me, whatever their motivations, on a daily basis. to escape the personally overwhelming experience of grappling my way through the overdetermined environment of the steadily-globalizing urban center of bamako, i have been reasonably sure from day one that i would prefer to carry out my studies in a small village (not to mention i have been planning to research agriculture). i need to finalize my decisions for the first (but first final) draft of my independent study tonight, so i will let you know what i come up with as soon as i'm ready to cut the umbilocal cord...
this was supposed to be a little bit more exhaustive of an entry, but... my blogging enthusiasm is trailing off a little bit, i'm afraid.
as always, much love, much more sand, a breath of pollution, and invisible wireless waves of the internet, all blowin' in the wind,
isaac
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
SANANKOROBA! (days 1 & 2)
here is one big long entry for the first big chunk of the village stay, most of it just copied out of my journal... i'll finish the rest of the entry later, but there's not much to say about day 3 because it was mostly more arts and crafts / me being really lonely and depressed, and day 4 deserves an entry of its own because i was alone with the family for the whole day... day 5 didn't really exist because we left in the morning...
DAY ONE - monday, 9/24/07
my host family here is big and loud and confusing and awesome... the compound incorporates a bunch of different families into one, and it's impossible to tell whose children are whose - not that it matters since most of the women seem to breastfeed and it's totally appropriate to beat kids that aren't technically yours... i live in a little hut of my own where we rigged up my mosquito net over this little mattress the SIT people brought for me (everyone got one). from what i've seen in the other rooms, the mosquito nets are pretty commonly used by everyone, which is good to see. there are lots of programs i see about on TV where mosquito nets, vaccinations, and malaria pills are provided to children and pregnant women in the villages, but a lot of times the TV info doesn't sync up very well with reality, so it's good to see the evidence of some of the stuff they claim to be doing to ameliorate the infant mortality rates and maternal-care miseducation.
i prayed today for the first time, with my host (brother?) dramane traoré, who doesn't speak very much, even though he's the only person in the compound who can really claim to communicate in french. during the month of ramadan, it's apparently customary for groups of people to congregate and pray outside in the evenings, instead of at the mosque. when i joined the ranks of men, people were still in the midst of their personal prayers, but the regulated, group-stuff began soon afterwards. my feelings about the experience were very open at first, and while i don't necessarily agree with what we were doing, the idea of everyone reaching down and placing their heads on the earth beneath the bright light of the full moon was very calming at first, and gave me the same kind of good feeling that the idea of ramadan does -- this kind of intentional sanctity with the less fortunate of the world. after about 50 minutes of the repetition, however, i was long ready to be done. i was interested in the conversation that went on between the marabou and the rest of the men at the end of the prayer session, but like many things here the gender seperation made me pretty uncomfortable: it seemed as if the leader of the prayer ceremony was asking various things of the men, and then they would just yell back to the women, only one or two of whom got any chance to respond... it just seemed like the sea of women behind us might as well have been invisible... but then i suppose there are some mosques around here where women aren't even allowed inside, so it was better than that.
i mentioned the moon a second ago, and it was cool that the moon happened to be rising in the direction of mecca, so it felt like we were praying to it, but i just need to explain for a moment how utterly amazing the full moon is when you escape the sprawling lights of a major city... as excited as i was about watching the stars under the same uncontaminated circumstances, they were almost impossible to see because of the intensity of the moon. i thought to myself tonight that if we must have light pollution, let it be the full moon. i will watch the stars later on in the week.
unfortunately, however, the light of the moon was not mesmerizing enough for the people in my family: after prayer time and a wonderful dinner of eggs, casava and plantains, they brought out an old black and white TV set, which they plugged in with an extension cord to an electrical outlet i hadn't noticed (there isn't one here in my little room, and we'd been told there would be no electricity). this ritual was kind of depressing for me, because it halted most conversation (though not to the extent that it does in the states), and most of the fuzzy mess we watched was blaring off in french, instead of bambara. i interrupted it a few times to ask the words for "stars," "moon" and "sky," but by the end of the night a little square had burned itself into my retinas and continues to frame everything in a much-too-small, much-too-geometric little space.
DAY TWO - tuesday, 9/25/07
I forgot about the language barrier as i woke up this morning... through the last haze of my sweaty, call-to-prayer-infected dreams, i was really confused when the woman knocking at my door was trying to tell me my bath was ready (keep in mind this was about 6:20). although last night i had been excited about the idea of a cold bucket of water in the morning (it was about 91° in my little oven/house), i was pleasantly surprised that the water had been heated up, as it was mighty chilly at that hour of the morning, especially naked in the open air. the bath was really pleasant, even knowing that everyone could see me naked over the really short little mud walls... i think the best part is in this compound, the "room" for bathing is different from the one for bodily waste, so i don't have to hold my nose while i pour water on myself, etc. one of our first days in mali whatsoever, a doctor came to talk to us about health and safety for foreigners; when he was explaining water conditions, he told us that when people first built actual little rooms to house the latrines, most people refused to use them because "they couldn't see the sky while they were peeing." i'm not quite so insistent about the peeing and pooping thing (though the openness helps ventilate the unpleasant smell), but it was super pleasant to be showering beneath a clear sky - it reminded me of being at the beach somehow.
i didn't mention it, but yesterday all the students regrouped for a couple hours at the place called "la case," and from there we traveled to a remote building surrounded by sports fields/courts, and we ended up doing "batik." apparently this is what they call it in english too, but it entails stamping hot wax stamps onto big pieces of fabric, so when you dye them the wax stamps will stay white...(i will return to this momentarily)
anyhow, we met at the case again today, at 8am, and we walked from there to this place called the sanankoroba SOS village (we found out later that where we'd been yesterday was a part of this place). the first SOS village was started by a man in austria right after world war II: it was a place to house and foster orphaned or abandoned children, and eventually it turned into a large school as well. Sanankoroba is one of two SOS villages in mali (the other in mopti), and i think there are several hundred of them around the world, each one catering to the local cultural customs, etc. it was a really wonderful thing to witness as we toured the grounds and asked questions of the director: children followed us around the whole time and we learned that they came from all over the country, completely free of charge, and received an education superior to any other public or private schools i've seen or heard about here. the living situation is organized like a big giant family, the "mother" and "father" serving as parental figures to well over a hundred kids at any given time. until their later teens, the children live in groups (between 4 and 10 kids) with volunteer host-"aunts," where they receive a calculated mix of traditional and formal education. the organization of this curriculum particularly interested me, because i've noticed that the traditional education here is a double-edged sword. one the one hand, it fits better into the culture than does the public education system (which still feels very colonial, albeit taught by african teachers for the most part) and often entails useful agricultural training, but at the same time it promotes many of the gender problems that persist here - it entails a harsh separation between girls and boys at about 10 years of age, which begins the solidification of gender roles where the distribution of labor is heavily imbalanced in favor of the men. at the SOS school, they had a community garden that everyone was required to tend to, and though the girls were more heavily trained in certain domestic activities, the boys were taught to cook and clean and whatnot, which is relatively unheard of if you ask the average man on the street - be it in the villages or in bamako.
overall, seeing the SOS school was really positive, just because it was so overwhelmingly GOOD in its very principles... but on the other hand, it seemed to be able to function better than the average education system here mostly because it was funded by a giant handful of international donors. the mentality was encouragingly progressive in the mixing of gender roles, the fact that the kids aren't beaten, the continued funding through university in bamako, all that kind of stuff -- and best of all, the staff was composed entirely of africans even though they maintained a constant exchange of ideas with other international SOS locations... but it was entirely self-contained (except that the kindergarten section had open spots for some non-orphan children from the village), which was just sad in comparison to the kinds of futures facing most of the kids living in my compound, for instance. anyway, as conflicting as it was, it was refreshing to see, and the children were very happy to see us and hold our hands and show us their classrooms and everything.
(speaking of classrooms, by the way: SOS boasts a limit of 45 students per classroom, which sounded unmanageable by USA standards, but the director told us that classrooms in the average public school often break the 100-student threshold)
we spent a lot of time after the SOS visit sitting under a tree and doing almost nothing, which was nice considering the weather, but conversation here inevitably turns to various forms of birth control and/or menstruation techniques... sounds like a stereotype but it was true today for over an hour, and i kind of wished i could have been experiencing something back at the compound where, even if it was only women talking, i might have a little more to add albeit in a language i can barely speak.
after lunch, we returned to the little building from yesterday, where each of us took our wax-printed sheets and chose a color we wanted to use for dye. this process was not worth describing - i'll just show those who are interested the thing i made once i get back. it'll probably end up as a tablecloth.
DAY ONE - monday, 9/24/07
my host family here is big and loud and confusing and awesome... the compound incorporates a bunch of different families into one, and it's impossible to tell whose children are whose - not that it matters since most of the women seem to breastfeed and it's totally appropriate to beat kids that aren't technically yours... i live in a little hut of my own where we rigged up my mosquito net over this little mattress the SIT people brought for me (everyone got one). from what i've seen in the other rooms, the mosquito nets are pretty commonly used by everyone, which is good to see. there are lots of programs i see about on TV where mosquito nets, vaccinations, and malaria pills are provided to children and pregnant women in the villages, but a lot of times the TV info doesn't sync up very well with reality, so it's good to see the evidence of some of the stuff they claim to be doing to ameliorate the infant mortality rates and maternal-care miseducation.
i prayed today for the first time, with my host (brother?) dramane traoré, who doesn't speak very much, even though he's the only person in the compound who can really claim to communicate in french. during the month of ramadan, it's apparently customary for groups of people to congregate and pray outside in the evenings, instead of at the mosque. when i joined the ranks of men, people were still in the midst of their personal prayers, but the regulated, group-stuff began soon afterwards. my feelings about the experience were very open at first, and while i don't necessarily agree with what we were doing, the idea of everyone reaching down and placing their heads on the earth beneath the bright light of the full moon was very calming at first, and gave me the same kind of good feeling that the idea of ramadan does -- this kind of intentional sanctity with the less fortunate of the world. after about 50 minutes of the repetition, however, i was long ready to be done. i was interested in the conversation that went on between the marabou and the rest of the men at the end of the prayer session, but like many things here the gender seperation made me pretty uncomfortable: it seemed as if the leader of the prayer ceremony was asking various things of the men, and then they would just yell back to the women, only one or two of whom got any chance to respond... it just seemed like the sea of women behind us might as well have been invisible... but then i suppose there are some mosques around here where women aren't even allowed inside, so it was better than that.
i mentioned the moon a second ago, and it was cool that the moon happened to be rising in the direction of mecca, so it felt like we were praying to it, but i just need to explain for a moment how utterly amazing the full moon is when you escape the sprawling lights of a major city... as excited as i was about watching the stars under the same uncontaminated circumstances, they were almost impossible to see because of the intensity of the moon. i thought to myself tonight that if we must have light pollution, let it be the full moon. i will watch the stars later on in the week.
unfortunately, however, the light of the moon was not mesmerizing enough for the people in my family: after prayer time and a wonderful dinner of eggs, casava and plantains, they brought out an old black and white TV set, which they plugged in with an extension cord to an electrical outlet i hadn't noticed (there isn't one here in my little room, and we'd been told there would be no electricity). this ritual was kind of depressing for me, because it halted most conversation (though not to the extent that it does in the states), and most of the fuzzy mess we watched was blaring off in french, instead of bambara. i interrupted it a few times to ask the words for "stars," "moon" and "sky," but by the end of the night a little square had burned itself into my retinas and continues to frame everything in a much-too-small, much-too-geometric little space.
DAY TWO - tuesday, 9/25/07
I forgot about the language barrier as i woke up this morning... through the last haze of my sweaty, call-to-prayer-infected dreams, i was really confused when the woman knocking at my door was trying to tell me my bath was ready (keep in mind this was about 6:20). although last night i had been excited about the idea of a cold bucket of water in the morning (it was about 91° in my little oven/house), i was pleasantly surprised that the water had been heated up, as it was mighty chilly at that hour of the morning, especially naked in the open air. the bath was really pleasant, even knowing that everyone could see me naked over the really short little mud walls... i think the best part is in this compound, the "room" for bathing is different from the one for bodily waste, so i don't have to hold my nose while i pour water on myself, etc. one of our first days in mali whatsoever, a doctor came to talk to us about health and safety for foreigners; when he was explaining water conditions, he told us that when people first built actual little rooms to house the latrines, most people refused to use them because "they couldn't see the sky while they were peeing." i'm not quite so insistent about the peeing and pooping thing (though the openness helps ventilate the unpleasant smell), but it was super pleasant to be showering beneath a clear sky - it reminded me of being at the beach somehow.
i didn't mention it, but yesterday all the students regrouped for a couple hours at the place called "la case," and from there we traveled to a remote building surrounded by sports fields/courts, and we ended up doing "batik." apparently this is what they call it in english too, but it entails stamping hot wax stamps onto big pieces of fabric, so when you dye them the wax stamps will stay white...(i will return to this momentarily)
anyhow, we met at the case again today, at 8am, and we walked from there to this place called the sanankoroba SOS village (we found out later that where we'd been yesterday was a part of this place). the first SOS village was started by a man in austria right after world war II: it was a place to house and foster orphaned or abandoned children, and eventually it turned into a large school as well. Sanankoroba is one of two SOS villages in mali (the other in mopti), and i think there are several hundred of them around the world, each one catering to the local cultural customs, etc. it was a really wonderful thing to witness as we toured the grounds and asked questions of the director: children followed us around the whole time and we learned that they came from all over the country, completely free of charge, and received an education superior to any other public or private schools i've seen or heard about here. the living situation is organized like a big giant family, the "mother" and "father" serving as parental figures to well over a hundred kids at any given time. until their later teens, the children live in groups (between 4 and 10 kids) with volunteer host-"aunts," where they receive a calculated mix of traditional and formal education. the organization of this curriculum particularly interested me, because i've noticed that the traditional education here is a double-edged sword. one the one hand, it fits better into the culture than does the public education system (which still feels very colonial, albeit taught by african teachers for the most part) and often entails useful agricultural training, but at the same time it promotes many of the gender problems that persist here - it entails a harsh separation between girls and boys at about 10 years of age, which begins the solidification of gender roles where the distribution of labor is heavily imbalanced in favor of the men. at the SOS school, they had a community garden that everyone was required to tend to, and though the girls were more heavily trained in certain domestic activities, the boys were taught to cook and clean and whatnot, which is relatively unheard of if you ask the average man on the street - be it in the villages or in bamako.
overall, seeing the SOS school was really positive, just because it was so overwhelmingly GOOD in its very principles... but on the other hand, it seemed to be able to function better than the average education system here mostly because it was funded by a giant handful of international donors. the mentality was encouragingly progressive in the mixing of gender roles, the fact that the kids aren't beaten, the continued funding through university in bamako, all that kind of stuff -- and best of all, the staff was composed entirely of africans even though they maintained a constant exchange of ideas with other international SOS locations... but it was entirely self-contained (except that the kindergarten section had open spots for some non-orphan children from the village), which was just sad in comparison to the kinds of futures facing most of the kids living in my compound, for instance. anyway, as conflicting as it was, it was refreshing to see, and the children were very happy to see us and hold our hands and show us their classrooms and everything.
(speaking of classrooms, by the way: SOS boasts a limit of 45 students per classroom, which sounded unmanageable by USA standards, but the director told us that classrooms in the average public school often break the 100-student threshold)
we spent a lot of time after the SOS visit sitting under a tree and doing almost nothing, which was nice considering the weather, but conversation here inevitably turns to various forms of birth control and/or menstruation techniques... sounds like a stereotype but it was true today for over an hour, and i kind of wished i could have been experiencing something back at the compound where, even if it was only women talking, i might have a little more to add albeit in a language i can barely speak.
after lunch, we returned to the little building from yesterday, where each of us took our wax-printed sheets and chose a color we wanted to use for dye. this process was not worth describing - i'll just show those who are interested the thing i made once i get back. it'll probably end up as a tablecloth.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
children of the night / fluorescent aisles
i've only got a second, and this isn't the kind of thing i imagine people are dying to hear about, but something that really swept me off my feet today is i realized all the birds flying in the sky at night are actually GIANT BATS. these are bigger than any bat i've ever seen -- like the wingspan of one of my arms, if not bigger -- and they fly overhead in great swarms with such non-bat-like, graceful flapping that i always just assumed they were birds.
i think i relate to bats because they are the only mammals that are truly capable of flying.
also, i actually do have something of interest, and i might as well go ahead and write while it's fresh... i just came from one of the handful of expatriate supermarkets that exist in bamako. i told some fellow students the other day -- and this may shock family members as much as it did the girls i told -- but honestly, i am attracted to supermarkets only in the way i am attracted towards pornography. some kind of visceral, experience-based reaction went on when i walked through those grossly familiar aisles with the other rich can't-standenites that wander the streets in mali when they're not hiding away in mansions. it's the same lure that las vegas or times square has, that kind of stomach-churning american dream that leaves you wishing you were having a nightmare...
anyway, it wasn't a metaphor market; there were interesting things to be found there, and certainly "interesting" as compared to the street markets here, or even the american grocery stores to which i am accustomed. most of the products seemed to come from france or the middle east -- though other european products and a bunch of american hair-care stuff were both pretty prevalent as well. anyway i'll put that into better context later when i get a chance to talk about other, more common methods of food distribution.
i think i relate to bats because they are the only mammals that are truly capable of flying.
also, i actually do have something of interest, and i might as well go ahead and write while it's fresh... i just came from one of the handful of expatriate supermarkets that exist in bamako. i told some fellow students the other day -- and this may shock family members as much as it did the girls i told -- but honestly, i am attracted to supermarkets only in the way i am attracted towards pornography. some kind of visceral, experience-based reaction went on when i walked through those grossly familiar aisles with the other rich can't-standenites that wander the streets in mali when they're not hiding away in mansions. it's the same lure that las vegas or times square has, that kind of stomach-churning american dream that leaves you wishing you were having a nightmare...
anyway, it wasn't a metaphor market; there were interesting things to be found there, and certainly "interesting" as compared to the street markets here, or even the american grocery stores to which i am accustomed. most of the products seemed to come from france or the middle east -- though other european products and a bunch of american hair-care stuff were both pretty prevalent as well. anyway i'll put that into better context later when i get a chance to talk about other, more common methods of food distribution.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
oh yeah, i forgot...
the bad news, which i've actually known since almost the first day, is we won't be allowed to go to Timbuktu (Tomboctou) or Gao because of a US travel warning placed on various regions in the north. apparently there is a terrorist group hiding in the desert that wants to take over algeria, which is really stupid, because it basically means there is a terrorist group dead-set against me riding a camel. it is unlikely that camel-riding will take place anywhere else on the trip, so i'm considering staying a few days longer and going up there of my own accord (with a guide of course), but i'm not positive, and i wouldn't go if i thought i'd be putting myself in serious danger.
but that's a bummer, anyhow. Timbuktu is home to a very prestigious university of the European Renaissance-era, the praise of which is relatively unsung in history books becase it was a contemporary of...well, the Renaissance, which, as we all know, is the most important thing that ever happened.
but that's a bummer, anyhow. Timbuktu is home to a very prestigious university of the European Renaissance-era, the praise of which is relatively unsung in history books becase it was a contemporary of...well, the Renaissance, which, as we all know, is the most important thing that ever happened.
fooooood here, especially now
the past new moon (last thursday) marked the beginning of ramadan, a muslim holiday that consists of one month of fasting. the significance is supposedly to give everyone a sense of how poor people live each day, which is a great concept (though we've been recommended not to try it for more than a day or two). the true definition of "fasting," in this tradition at least, actually consists of not eating or drinking during the daylight... thus plenty of families pig out during the night time, and nearly everyone wakes up around 4am to eat some stuff / drinks some water to get them through the day.
while fasting doesn't at first sound like the best time to explain the food in this culture, the special foods prepared at night comprise some interesting examples of various traditional meals. so far, the two times i've eaten after sunset with my brother, aunt and uncle and my aunt's drugstore ("alimentation"), i was obliged to first eat what they call porridge (though that name applies to several dishes, apparently). this consists of a large grain similar to tapioca, all sweetened with a bunch of sugar and ginger. i like it pretty well, though i have yet to finish drinking a whole cup of it the way everyone else does. after that (both times), we ate what must be the most disgusting thing i've ever had: bull intestines. i am not sure how intestines are eaten safely as they have fecal matter carried inside them, but obviously it can be done. my main concern was that the wrinkled black meat looks a lot like a giant tongue and is very difficult to swallow without first chewing for a long time and getting the full-on textural experience.
in general, people do not use utensils here. most dishes consist of rice topped with some kind of sauce containing meat and vegetables, served in a large communal bowl that is shared by as many as six or seven people. after the water bowl is passed around according to age, everyone scoops the rice into little sauce-laden balls -- for sure using only the right hand (the left hand is used to wipe one's ass and is hence not suitable for eating... luckily i am right handed). the more adroit native eaters have a little flick-of-the-wrist-thing they do to form the handful into a discrete unit that doesn't fall on the ground like mine when we shove our hands in our mouths. perhaps the most popular dish is made from crushed peanuts, though i am allergic to peanuts so i've learned what that dish looks like (since smelling food before you eat it is considered rude here) as well as how to say "i cannot eat peanuts; they kill me" in bamanankan. another thing they eat a lot of here is french fries, which i have helped to make with the women in my family (this is kind of uheard of - men cooking, that is - so i have hidden it from my brother... men and women also generally eat seperately, so sometimes if my brother isn't home my aunt makes me eat alone in my room). the french fries are sometimes made of sweet potatoes (not always orange) or cassava -- those are really good when they're hot, not so much when they're not. fried plantains with onions are relatively common, and meat that was not prepared in a stew/sauce is often cooked on a skewer or in little meatballs. fish is common in the rice dishes, and always includes the whole fish. i ate a couple of small deep-fried whole fish once, and they were surprisingly good despite how unappetizing they looked. sandwiches are popular on the street, though i have grown tired of rice, bread and noodles as they constitute a good 60 percent of my diet. sometimes for dinner we will just eat pasta with oil on it -- the eating of which is aided by using the bread as little grabbing-gloves... so, in so many words, a noodle sandwich.
at school every day we have salad that is safe to eat, but for travelers the fruit and vegetables are generally off limits unless they have a thick skin you peel yourself -- water conditions here are not what they ought to be and cause lots of illness among children between the ages of 0 and 6 years. corn, millet, rice and sorghum are some of the biggest crops here, and a popular dish in the villages (for all meals, apparently) is called "to" -- a thick porridge of grains with an acquired taste and texture. sometimes it is topped with a black juice that comes out of baobab trees, but i just assume the sap stay in the tree where it is more comfortable, and so am i. one of the most popular crops i see every day throughout the city (as well as in the country) is okra, which is a main ingredient in a whole class of really mucus-y sauces you can eat over rice.
i'd love to go into greater detail but i've been at this internet spot for about one million hours and i've got several assignments to work on. i interviewed my uncle last week about his rice farm about 20 km outside of bamako (hope i can visit it!), but i still have another interview to do, plus a photography project and an investigation of where the human waste in bamako goes (short answer: it doesn't go). we recently returned from a weekend voyage to sikasso, a village several hours south of here near the border of burkina faso and cote d'ivoire -- also the home of my family name, Berthé. i hope to tell more about the visit later, or especially post some pictures of the amazing hike we took, but like i said i should go soon. the last thing i'll say now is that next week begins our five-day sojourn to kalabankora, a very small village where we will live with non-french-speaking families and hopefully my bambara will improve...
all of my love / k'an bu fo...
idrissa
while fasting doesn't at first sound like the best time to explain the food in this culture, the special foods prepared at night comprise some interesting examples of various traditional meals. so far, the two times i've eaten after sunset with my brother, aunt and uncle and my aunt's drugstore ("alimentation"), i was obliged to first eat what they call porridge (though that name applies to several dishes, apparently). this consists of a large grain similar to tapioca, all sweetened with a bunch of sugar and ginger. i like it pretty well, though i have yet to finish drinking a whole cup of it the way everyone else does. after that (both times), we ate what must be the most disgusting thing i've ever had: bull intestines. i am not sure how intestines are eaten safely as they have fecal matter carried inside them, but obviously it can be done. my main concern was that the wrinkled black meat looks a lot like a giant tongue and is very difficult to swallow without first chewing for a long time and getting the full-on textural experience.
in general, people do not use utensils here. most dishes consist of rice topped with some kind of sauce containing meat and vegetables, served in a large communal bowl that is shared by as many as six or seven people. after the water bowl is passed around according to age, everyone scoops the rice into little sauce-laden balls -- for sure using only the right hand (the left hand is used to wipe one's ass and is hence not suitable for eating... luckily i am right handed). the more adroit native eaters have a little flick-of-the-wrist-thing they do to form the handful into a discrete unit that doesn't fall on the ground like mine when we shove our hands in our mouths. perhaps the most popular dish is made from crushed peanuts, though i am allergic to peanuts so i've learned what that dish looks like (since smelling food before you eat it is considered rude here) as well as how to say "i cannot eat peanuts; they kill me" in bamanankan. another thing they eat a lot of here is french fries, which i have helped to make with the women in my family (this is kind of uheard of - men cooking, that is - so i have hidden it from my brother... men and women also generally eat seperately, so sometimes if my brother isn't home my aunt makes me eat alone in my room). the french fries are sometimes made of sweet potatoes (not always orange) or cassava -- those are really good when they're hot, not so much when they're not. fried plantains with onions are relatively common, and meat that was not prepared in a stew/sauce is often cooked on a skewer or in little meatballs. fish is common in the rice dishes, and always includes the whole fish. i ate a couple of small deep-fried whole fish once, and they were surprisingly good despite how unappetizing they looked. sandwiches are popular on the street, though i have grown tired of rice, bread and noodles as they constitute a good 60 percent of my diet. sometimes for dinner we will just eat pasta with oil on it -- the eating of which is aided by using the bread as little grabbing-gloves... so, in so many words, a noodle sandwich.
at school every day we have salad that is safe to eat, but for travelers the fruit and vegetables are generally off limits unless they have a thick skin you peel yourself -- water conditions here are not what they ought to be and cause lots of illness among children between the ages of 0 and 6 years. corn, millet, rice and sorghum are some of the biggest crops here, and a popular dish in the villages (for all meals, apparently) is called "to" -- a thick porridge of grains with an acquired taste and texture. sometimes it is topped with a black juice that comes out of baobab trees, but i just assume the sap stay in the tree where it is more comfortable, and so am i. one of the most popular crops i see every day throughout the city (as well as in the country) is okra, which is a main ingredient in a whole class of really mucus-y sauces you can eat over rice.
i'd love to go into greater detail but i've been at this internet spot for about one million hours and i've got several assignments to work on. i interviewed my uncle last week about his rice farm about 20 km outside of bamako (hope i can visit it!), but i still have another interview to do, plus a photography project and an investigation of where the human waste in bamako goes (short answer: it doesn't go). we recently returned from a weekend voyage to sikasso, a village several hours south of here near the border of burkina faso and cote d'ivoire -- also the home of my family name, Berthé. i hope to tell more about the visit later, or especially post some pictures of the amazing hike we took, but like i said i should go soon. the last thing i'll say now is that next week begins our five-day sojourn to kalabankora, a very small village where we will live with non-french-speaking families and hopefully my bambara will improve...
all of my love / k'an bu fo...
idrissa
Thursday, September 13, 2007
(recovered:) brazilian soap operas, but no toilet paper
{i wrote this right after the bull one, but all of a sudden a desert dust storm blew out all the power in the neighborhood. i ran home to beat the rain, and subsequently was covered with a thick layer of dust... anyhow here's what the blog recovered in its entirity... i think it cuts off but that's just as well because i had already talked enough.}
it's tempting to spend a lot of time summarizing the overwhelmingly stupid plots of the soap operas that even the poorest of people here are obsessed with... dubbed into french from portugese, even though plenty of people don't even speak great french here... but other more exciting things have happened, and i told you i'd write about the traffic...
whether paved or not, the streets here are clogged with an almost constant stream of motorcycles, microbuses, mercedes, and pedestrians -- listed here in order of their prominence. (goats, short-haired sheep, mules, chickens and cows are also everywhere, but they don't really fit into my little analysis here so much as they serve as an interesting and often hilarious background.) motorcycles are the main mode of transportation, and although it is not recommended i have frequented the back seat of my brother's moto as it is the only way he gets from point ¤ to point ç. most people have them because they are cost-efficient, which is the same reason everyone drives old bulky mercedes coups -- they run on diesel, which is cheaper. the microbuses are all painted green and are called sutaramas -- the primary form of public transportation between and among the various neighborhoods of bamako. despite these vehicles' varying sizes, shapes and security, the point of this explanation is to express how similar everyone is to the pedestrian mentality -- the face-to-face interaction of street-walkers -- despite the apparent insanity of the driving style. at first, all drivers seem reckless and intimidating, and as a pedestrian it seems like you are always about to be hit by some kind of pollution/dust machine. but as i got a better sense of the friendly communication between strangers, i began to realize that the cacophony of horns and hand-wavings was more calculated than it appeared to be. as opposed to the hateful beeps from the closed/tinted windows of american SUV's, the horns here are used more often as a way of greeting someone you know on the street or to let another driver know that you are coming into the intersection. i have seen no left-turn arrows here, which means that all left turns must be negotiated by sticking your nose into oncoming traffic and waving at people to let you through. somehow there is a very harmonious understanding of the would-be rules around here, all of which seem to revolve around the idea that if you let people get through because they need to, then others will allow you the same discretion later. all of this, like everything else here, depends upon whether you greet people properly... a hand out the window and a little tap of the horn signifies one of about a zillion different things, but then again we also learned that the words for "bird," "stomach," and "inside" are basically the same word.
it's tempting to spend a lot of time summarizing the overwhelmingly stupid plots of the soap operas that even the poorest of people here are obsessed with... dubbed into french from portugese, even though plenty of people don't even speak great french here... but other more exciting things have happened, and i told you i'd write about the traffic...
whether paved or not, the streets here are clogged with an almost constant stream of motorcycles, microbuses, mercedes, and pedestrians -- listed here in order of their prominence. (goats, short-haired sheep, mules, chickens and cows are also everywhere, but they don't really fit into my little analysis here so much as they serve as an interesting and often hilarious background.) motorcycles are the main mode of transportation, and although it is not recommended i have frequented the back seat of my brother's moto as it is the only way he gets from point ¤ to point ç. most people have them because they are cost-efficient, which is the same reason everyone drives old bulky mercedes coups -- they run on diesel, which is cheaper. the microbuses are all painted green and are called sutaramas -- the primary form of public transportation between and among the various neighborhoods of bamako. despite these vehicles' varying sizes, shapes and security, the point of this explanation is to express how similar everyone is to the pedestrian mentality -- the face-to-face interaction of street-walkers -- despite the apparent insanity of the driving style. at first, all drivers seem reckless and intimidating, and as a pedestrian it seems like you are always about to be hit by some kind of pollution/dust machine. but as i got a better sense of the friendly communication between strangers, i began to realize that the cacophony of horns and hand-wavings was more calculated than it appeared to be. as opposed to the hateful beeps from the closed/tinted windows of american SUV's, the horns here are used more often as a way of greeting someone you know on the street or to let another driver know that you are coming into the intersection. i have seen no left-turn arrows here, which means that all left turns must be negotiated by sticking your nose into oncoming traffic and waving at people to let you through. somehow there is a very harmonious understanding of the would-be rules around here, all of which seem to revolve around the idea that if you let people get through because they need to, then others will allow you the same discretion later. all of this, like everything else here, depends upon whether you greet people properly... a hand out the window and a little tap of the horn signifies one of about a zillion different things, but then again we also learned that the words for "bird," "stomach," and "inside" are basically the same word.
the bull and the address
two things i forgot last time... (reader discretion is advised for the first)
1) one of the more foreign experiences i've had so far was to watch a bull be slaughtered in the street. my brother and i were visiting a house not far from us where a fellow american student was staying: we were checking on her because she'd been sick, but she was asleep. i stuck around for a little while chatting with another visitor on the patio about various malian customs, and when we were about to part they asked if i wanted to watch them kill this bull that had been next to us the whole time. the idea of watching a slaughter take place a couple feet away made me a little nervous, but i'm always preaching about how slaughterhouses in the US should have glass walls, and i knew i would regret it if i went home empty-minded... so i stayed. the bull was a truly massive animal, and it took several men a good while to knock it over with ropes lassoed round its neck and two legs. when it had shaken the earth with all that weight tumbling to the unpaved street, they tied its legs together and the young man who turned out to be the main slaughter-authority got behind its head and wielded its two giant horns to keep it still while someone procured the knife. the horn-man twisted the horns until the neck popped and he then made a really wide cut across the floppy, dangling skin of the bull's throat. it bled for a long time and another guy had to stand on all fours on its stomach to push out the air and restrain the spasms that occurred as all the different parts of the body realized that the jugular vein had been irreprably damaged. i recognize that this description is extremely graphic, and for that reason it's not necessary to waste more time telling about the skinning and gutting process, but i did watch this whole event take place, and it had a pretty profound effect on me. it occurred with such nonchalance in the middle of a neighborhood where plenty of people passed by, albeit night time. i wish i had something to say about the look in the eye of the animal or something like that, but it seemed so necessary to the survival of the community, so ordinary among the sheep and goats roaming the streets or the bizarre animal parts on sale in the marketplace, that the ethical question never really occurred to me. the treatment of animals here is very bothersome if i consider how much i've loved certain pets in my life, and quite frankly it has surprised me thus far. children, in particular, are visibly really mean to the animals that roam the streets, but then again the idea of domestication for pleasure or companionship doesn't seem to exist because a dog or cat is another mouth to feed and they often carry diseases. i'm looking for something to say to sum this up but i'm not finding anything --
2) my mailing address here is:
isaac fosl-van wyke
c/o modibo coulibaly
world learning, school for international training
BPE 2953
Bamako, Mali, West Africa
1) one of the more foreign experiences i've had so far was to watch a bull be slaughtered in the street. my brother and i were visiting a house not far from us where a fellow american student was staying: we were checking on her because she'd been sick, but she was asleep. i stuck around for a little while chatting with another visitor on the patio about various malian customs, and when we were about to part they asked if i wanted to watch them kill this bull that had been next to us the whole time. the idea of watching a slaughter take place a couple feet away made me a little nervous, but i'm always preaching about how slaughterhouses in the US should have glass walls, and i knew i would regret it if i went home empty-minded... so i stayed. the bull was a truly massive animal, and it took several men a good while to knock it over with ropes lassoed round its neck and two legs. when it had shaken the earth with all that weight tumbling to the unpaved street, they tied its legs together and the young man who turned out to be the main slaughter-authority got behind its head and wielded its two giant horns to keep it still while someone procured the knife. the horn-man twisted the horns until the neck popped and he then made a really wide cut across the floppy, dangling skin of the bull's throat. it bled for a long time and another guy had to stand on all fours on its stomach to push out the air and restrain the spasms that occurred as all the different parts of the body realized that the jugular vein had been irreprably damaged. i recognize that this description is extremely graphic, and for that reason it's not necessary to waste more time telling about the skinning and gutting process, but i did watch this whole event take place, and it had a pretty profound effect on me. it occurred with such nonchalance in the middle of a neighborhood where plenty of people passed by, albeit night time. i wish i had something to say about the look in the eye of the animal or something like that, but it seemed so necessary to the survival of the community, so ordinary among the sheep and goats roaming the streets or the bizarre animal parts on sale in the marketplace, that the ethical question never really occurred to me. the treatment of animals here is very bothersome if i consider how much i've loved certain pets in my life, and quite frankly it has surprised me thus far. children, in particular, are visibly really mean to the animals that roam the streets, but then again the idea of domestication for pleasure or companionship doesn't seem to exist because a dog or cat is another mouth to feed and they often carry diseases. i'm looking for something to say to sum this up but i'm not finding anything --
2) my mailing address here is:
isaac fosl-van wyke
c/o modibo coulibaly
world learning, school for international training
BPE 2953
Bamako, Mali, West Africa
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