Kama, one of my host family 'little brothers' and a beacon of sunshine. He told his dad that he wanted to drop out of school, so he became a cow herder for three months during the dry season and now he farms. 
One full year. The days go by slowly, but the weeks and months have flown by, and now here I am in Bamako welcoming a new group of trainees, telling them stories and assuring them they will survive. It is a fresh dose of perspective to be reminded that only a year ago, I too was struggling to say the most basic phrases, that I thought the food in my homestay was terrible (I look back on it now and say, hey, that was pretty good!), that I was truly a child in terms of my ability to function in this society.
And now... here I am, having passed through the growing pains of adolescence and arrived at adulthood (well, pretty close). I don't have to ask questions about how to say such and such, what's appropriate, how things are done, or what organism is living in my gut. These things feel like second nature to me now (and my amoebas are like well-loved house pets... I feed them well).
The past two months have been the best yet. After months of sweating and waiting for the rains, the sky finally darkened and the village shifted from under the shade of the mango trees to back-breaking labor in the fields. Every morning the women wake up at 4am and trek out in the pitch black to collect the shea nuts that have fallen in the night. By daybreak they have returned, heated water, cooked, and they head out to the fields again, with hoes slung across their shoulders and bowls of food on their heads. 
Some are lucky enough to have cows, and the men till the fields with cow plows before seeding, but others just hack at the dry crusted earth with their sculpted, weathered muscles, and little by little they plant hectare after hectare of peanuts, rice, sorghum, millet, and corn. Once the seed is in the ground, the first field is already weed-infested, and the frenzy of weeding begins. It is truly back-breaking labor, and I marvel at how they tackle such a seemingly hopeless task(eleven hectares of corn stretches for a loooong way).
Last week my host dad 'hired' the women's group of my family (the Bengali women) to come weed his field for a day - 40 women for an entire day for about 10 US dollars. Wow. The old women came with their 'chichira' shaker gourds and sang, and women would rise to dance and sing as they hoed, drenched in dirt and sweat. Abdouleye told me that when he was a kid it was always like that, that when people went to plant, the drums came too, and their was dancing and singing in order to urge people along in their work. But, he says, the cow plow came and it is hard to play drums, and that the tradition has mostly disapeared. I can't help but question what constitutes progress Yes, the cow plow is good, I won't deny that, but it saddens me to see how quickly their society is being overtaken by new technology - at such a speed that they don't have time to adjust their cultural practices... they just get lost.
Some are lucky enough to have cows, and the men till the fields with cow plows before seeding, but others just hack at the dry crusted earth with their sculpted, weathered muscles, and little by little they plant hectare after hectare of peanuts, rice, sorghum, millet, and corn. Once the seed is in the ground, the first field is already weed-infested, and the frenzy of weeding begins. It is truly back-breaking labor, and I marvel at how they tackle such a seemingly hopeless task(eleven hectares of corn stretches for a loooong way).Last week my host dad 'hired' the women's group of my family (the Bengali women) to come weed his field for a day - 40 women for an entire day for about 10 US dollars. Wow. The old women came with their 'chichira' shaker gourds and sang, and women would rise to dance and sing as they hoed, drenched in dirt and sweat. Abdouleye told me that when he was a kid it was always like that, that when people went to plant, the drums came too, and their was dancing and singing in order to urge people along in their work. But, he says, the cow plow came and it is hard to play drums, and that the tradition has mostly disapeared. I can't help but question what constitutes progress Yes, the cow plow is good, I won't deny that, but it saddens me to see how quickly their society is being overtaken by new technology - at such a speed that they don't have time to adjust their cultural practices... they just get lost.Abdouleye (my work partner) and I have pushed full steam ahead with field experiments. Several farmers are trying out new sorghum varieties in controlled plots, some are putting urine on corn (a free source of nitrogen), and one farmer just planted an alley cropping trial (nitrogen fixing trees in a crop field). I have also taught my womens group about Moringa, a tree whose leaves are rich in vitamins, iron, and calcium, and they have planted them throughout the village. So, slowly, slowly, I feel like I am starting to be useful.
Yaya and Abdouleye, my two best friends in M'Pedougou. Yaya measures the rain every day for logging in our sorghum trial notebook. This is in the middle of his peanut field.
Abdouleye with a jug of watered down pee, getting ready to go "water" our corn test plot. Hmmm, nitrogen.
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On Language
Speaking a foreign language means learning to see the world in a new way. If it is true that “I think, therefore I am,” than thinking lays the very foundation of ‘being.’ Our patterns of thinking are, in turn, deeply trained by the linguistic tools that we use to organize our perceptions of the world around us. As my Bambara progresses, I realize how my mental habits are shifting as well. Significantly, there is no word for “late.”
Some fun ones -
I forgot – A bora n kono – It was inside me, it left
End of the month – kalo ka sa = death of the moon
Fruit – yiriden = tree children
Airport – pankurunjiginyoro = jumping boat landing place
To do physical activity/sports – farikolo nyenaje = bring body bones together for amusement
To spit – dajibo = to put out mouth water
N t’a don = I don’t know, I don’t enter, I don’t wear it, It’s mine
Yele - to smile, to laugh, to open, to go up, and light
And I realized just how mixed up the word order can get. Learning French was hard because of the masculine feminine nonsense, but at least the word order stays relatively similar – Not so in Bambara. The sentence ‘N be na mangora ja cogo kura jira dugo muso ma,’ translates word for word: I am coming mango dry way new show village women to.
On White Skin
I have yet to silence the complete pandemonium of emotions – anger, confusion, exasperation, and sadness – that arises every time the glowing apparition of my skin falls under the gaze of Malian children. It is the soundtrack to my existence: a high-pitched chipmunk warble of a broken record spinning the same three syllables into eternity, “Tubabu! Tubabu! Tubabu!” Occasionally the record progresses into loud nasal “Ca vaaa? Ca vaaa? Bon soooir,” as they say good evening at 10 o’clock in the morning.
Some days I eke out a smile and a soft greeting, “Aw ni che.”Some days I grit my teeth, avert eye contact, and hope that if I ignore them maybe they’ll go away. This only makes it grow louder.
Some days I burst a seam and I call back “My name is not Tubabu!” in Bambara.
The word Tubab comes from the Arabic word for doctor – tubib. So. I guess I’m a doctor. I come bearing news of washing-hands-with-soap and beans-beans-the-magical-fruit. Amazing how these two things could in fact produce a significant impact on their well-being. The Tubab-shouting children are only one group, the excited, eager, swarming kind. The others are no less curious, but they stay silent behind shy, shell-shocked eyes as they gape unashamedly at the wonder of my skin. Some, in rural villages, take a quick appraisal of this ghost in the shape of a woman and run screaming in horror. I’ve even seen one trip and fall on his flight from my ghastly presence.
If white children had never before seen black people, would they behave in the same way? If so, why do children respond this way? Why do kids get so outrageously excited by me? Why do I get so annoyed? What role does the history of French colonization play in all of this? Do they have a persisting "pyschological colonization" that manifests as an inferiority complex?
I reflect on these thoughts and I try to understand the complexities of my reactions. I have a quote on my wall that reads:
Speaking a foreign language means learning to see the world in a new way. If it is true that “I think, therefore I am,” than thinking lays the very foundation of ‘being.’ Our patterns of thinking are, in turn, deeply trained by the linguistic tools that we use to organize our perceptions of the world around us. As my Bambara progresses, I realize how my mental habits are shifting as well. Significantly, there is no word for “late.”
Some fun ones -
I forgot – A bora n kono – It was inside me, it left
End of the month – kalo ka sa = death of the moon
Fruit – yiriden = tree children
Airport – pankurunjiginyoro = jumping boat landing place
To do physical activity/sports – farikolo nyenaje = bring body bones together for amusement
To spit – dajibo = to put out mouth water
N t’a don = I don’t know, I don’t enter, I don’t wear it, It’s mine
Yele - to smile, to laugh, to open, to go up, and light
And I realized just how mixed up the word order can get. Learning French was hard because of the masculine feminine nonsense, but at least the word order stays relatively similar – Not so in Bambara. The sentence ‘N be na mangora ja cogo kura jira dugo muso ma,’ translates word for word: I am coming mango dry way new show village women to.
On White Skin
I have yet to silence the complete pandemonium of emotions – anger, confusion, exasperation, and sadness – that arises every time the glowing apparition of my skin falls under the gaze of Malian children. It is the soundtrack to my existence: a high-pitched chipmunk warble of a broken record spinning the same three syllables into eternity, “Tubabu! Tubabu! Tubabu!” Occasionally the record progresses into loud nasal “Ca vaaa? Ca vaaa? Bon soooir,” as they say good evening at 10 o’clock in the morning.
Some days I eke out a smile and a soft greeting, “Aw ni che.”Some days I grit my teeth, avert eye contact, and hope that if I ignore them maybe they’ll go away. This only makes it grow louder.
Some days I burst a seam and I call back “My name is not Tubabu!” in Bambara.
The word Tubab comes from the Arabic word for doctor – tubib. So. I guess I’m a doctor. I come bearing news of washing-hands-with-soap and beans-beans-the-magical-fruit. Amazing how these two things could in fact produce a significant impact on their well-being. The Tubab-shouting children are only one group, the excited, eager, swarming kind. The others are no less curious, but they stay silent behind shy, shell-shocked eyes as they gape unashamedly at the wonder of my skin. Some, in rural villages, take a quick appraisal of this ghost in the shape of a woman and run screaming in horror. I’ve even seen one trip and fall on his flight from my ghastly presence.
If white children had never before seen black people, would they behave in the same way? If so, why do children respond this way? Why do kids get so outrageously excited by me? Why do I get so annoyed? What role does the history of French colonization play in all of this? Do they have a persisting "pyschological colonization" that manifests as an inferiority complex?
I reflect on these thoughts and I try to understand the complexities of my reactions. I have a quote on my wall that reads:
Treat every person you meet
as if they have a sign around their neck that says
‘Make me feel important.’
So there I am on my bicycle riding home from Sikasso through packs of chanting children…. Sighing and trying to smile and remain relaxed and to practice unconditional love. I can’t change Malians, I can only change my reaction to them ("if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make the change”). Yet if I could change one thing, it would be to hide my skin. I guess I will work on that patience thing some more.
And MORE pictures are athttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265565&l=68f84&id=3408340
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