brimming

been climbing trees with pockets full of peanuts and something to read. and ka te caman min is to drink lots of tea, or smoke lots of tea, if you like the beat term for mary j. sipping tea with cekorobas is educating. my cousin has resumed my responsibility, since my brother now rides bush buses bareback like a cowboy. he stops through our town once a day and seeks me out for a substantial embrace; he yells motherfucker from afar because that's the only english word he retained from our bicycling through fly infested cow pastures. i hate flies.

my cousin

to the fields and on missions with my new chauffeur I go. this is a better friend, a truer friend, who cares about the community's attitude towards me and is always willing to talk business after working all day in the fields. we listen to bob marley every night because it tastes good to him

in the meantime I try and stay close to the village when unaccompanied. during and after the rainy season when the grass is tall, bush people spy on villages - especially those with a live-in whitey (I'm white here, I can't help it. they think I'm playing a sick caste joke when I argue that I'm half mexican) - from deep cover. I would imagine them licking their chops but I don't expect myself to be very savory. I'll never see them says my cousin... he can, but I won't ever be able to. and it's hard right now, since the village is a ghost town during the day. peanut season means everyone pulls and I have no one to play with. in the middle of nowhere with no one around, except maybe the dugutiki. but he looks, and more frighteningly sounds, like jabba the hutt, so I don't hang round his place much.

but it was there I had another momentary manifestation of my levity. after a nighttime community meeting I got one of those hits, a sculpting of this extraordinary experience into the column of my being; the dim light reflected off the faces of my conversation-engaged counterparts in such a way that reminded me that we're doing something here. we're improving lives in a manner that seems relevant. development takes a lot of time and work, mine certainly will. right now and most of the time I can justify the PC cause. so my satisfaction gets bigger and better so fast that for a few seconds I'm suspended in delight with an almost all american taste.

ain't no rollercoaster, but the boat sure is rocking... I'm getting exactly what I wanted and everything I asked for. except maybe all the days of altered states, I'm getting too old for this shit. heading to sikasso, mali's land of plenty, for thanksgiving... turkeys and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. and really, who knows what else...

manantalloween

no details

I left my banking town for an adventure with a couple of guests and the manantali boys. our noon departure turned out to be a nasty four-hour, 150 km, packed bush bus trip. the heat smell and noise were well worth, not our arrival to the city, but a traversing descent upon what might resemble a small 70s texas town. I was already excited when we immediately proceeded to their regular spot and began unwinding ourselves. there we ordered beers and purchased a bottle of cheap scotch. just after a few hours, dusk, and realizing we had no flashlights, we shuttled seven people with three bikes. what a sight we were.

in between organizing high noon supply runs and hassling with the dam man, who delayed our lake float away, relax is all we did. we managed to have an excellent time despite being shorthanded; three girls were stuck with language lessons in kita and another was lost at site. we saw mali, which is the bambaran word for hippo, and chilled with a pet monkey that will eat your tea and smoke out of your hand. the bambaran word for smoke and drink is the same - min. after a few days of fires and river tubing and doing whatever whenever we pulled each other together to return for halloween in kita. we were able to catch AC’d PC transport because it seems like everything works in your favor with the peace corps. so we just chilled in the backseat reveling in the spoils of living like an american gangster. the party had commenced before our evening arrival, so we put on our costumes and game faces directly. I was some emasculating thing in a skirt, my date wore aviators and a well fitting racer jumpsuit from the dead tubab store, and most of everyone else was a clever spin on something malian.

the rest was a mess of wrestling, water balloons, and waking people up with our asinine late night talk. we were able to maintain an active dance floor and kill a fridge packed to the gills with beer and pocket shots. there were lost and found sandals jewelry beds and dignity. we hung out in kita an extra day, made cheese for pizza sandwiches, recovered... our vacation was coming to end.

but though we anticipated the return to our solitude at site, we couldn't resist the momentum that had been created. I followed my guests to bamako, where they had to stay the night before continuing on to site, and where I would have fixed the glasses I broke that morning. there we sought dinner on the way to a long awaited milkshake. we met a PCV couple for pizza and wine and sorted out the plans for our last night of debauchery. I arranged a visit to and nightstay at our favorite LCF's apartment, where we got to min rooftop with malians and learned the term of endearment for a woman who's a devil in the sack - juguni. it means hedgehog because it gets hot when you touch it.

after midnight we decided to look for the night's second bottle of whiskey at the same club from swear-in. it was closed so we went searching and found a bakery and gay bar. the bakery was going to be open all night, they were heavy cleaning and decided to keep business going, so we agreed to eat fourth meal there. everything works out in PC. the gay bar was a good time, we didn't have to hide our heterosexual affection (it's highly and culturally inappropriate to publicly display this in mali) and we got glimpses of the counterculture. we made it back and fell sleep under the stars just before dawn, every second of the night had been squeezed to our satisfaction

the next morning we had tea and croissants with diats the LCF and ran around bamako trying to get the others on their way home. at this point we were completely useless and could barely fix a direction. along the way was soft-serve, a surprising substitute for the milkshake I never got. while making our last niger river crossing, as it runs through the middle of the city, an accomplice took a picture of that pitiful waterbody, for a final good measure and nice fuck you to anyone hating on our game. it's dirty but works, the end. once they were fixed I walked bamako for a couple of hours and happened to meet a couple of the kita kaw girls at the bus station on their way back from a GAD gathering. we took transport together, I couldn't help my good spirits which contrasted their mood so drastically. we bulleted back to kita by night with sacked live goats on the roof and our seat completely surrounded by armed military personnel.

I'll be returning to manantali soon... for the stuff we left at the bottom of the lake.

effortless first month

my aunt gave me a kitten. it was a girl but I named it after my brother who left village to be a mobilitigi. I say was because it already died, it threw up all the processed cheese and tuna I fed it. the last tuna and cheese I had too. the ladies around village said it was doomed from the bad luck that was bestowed upon it when I didn't flip my aunt a 20 cent piece after she gave it to me. I found out that my jatiki or dad is a marabou, which is a widely respected fortune teller and medecine man who travels and gets paid to help solve problems. he's in bamako for a month as requested by someone with money. he's a mali OG. he gave me the wife he picked up when her husband went west to look for gold. and a few of my cousins have died trying to cross the strait of gibralter in a canoe.

I learned most of this from the PC language and cultural facilitator whom was sent to my site. he just crashed on my floor for a week and gave me all the heads up that administration doesn't. with him I held my first meeting with the community elders. I heard everything they want me to get done (they're very ambitious), and I told them I'll be doing my own need assessment and that their financial contributions to projects are critical for each's implementation. consequently I'm working on income generating activities like fixing their broken shea machine and constructing a legitimate garden; they reported having several associations that will be able to do all the grunt work, though I'm sure they'll need reorganizing.

still most of the time I'm learning language... I'll sit for hours with the corn husking circle or shell peanuts with my moms or chat over tea with the school's headmaster. and I make dinner sometimes so we'll talk while cooking. my mom gave me a chicken with just charred skin because that's how they pluck it. it added smokiness to the soup I made with it and onions, garlic, corn and rice, salt, and their version of boullion and powdered chili pepper. it was so good and hot and spicy. I can't wait for my ramen being sent from the states. and I roasted fresh peanuts and poured honey all over them, since the peanuts were hot the honey barely carmalized. it tasted exactly like everything that's good about honey nut cheerios. and there's fresh milk thrice a week. oh and banana season just started, I can get a whole bunch for 50 cents. a fine substitute to all the grilled corn I've become addicted to...

and I sit outside at night or at the front of an approaching storm after playing soccer and think this is my fucking kingdom and it's always been like that and I seem to forget sometimes. it's been like that since the first time I was smitten with love and the ocean and the electric eels the moonlight makes under its surface. like everytime I work up a real good sweat or get scared. we're going to lake manantali for halloween, where they have hippos and monkeys and espn. adventure and indulgence escort me through this lonely place. this makes me happy.

getting greedy

I granted myself a reprieve from minimalism

my brother was going to kita to buy the family rice. we biked the 20 k to kokofata, forded the streams, saw boobies, took shortcuts. in kokofata we hooked up with transport that packed 25+ people in a hollowed out utility van. I sat next to a lady who had stubborn opinions about PC, I just smiled and kept asking her why. we got stopped by gendarmerie (which in my experience is just mali highway patrol who demand bribes from travelers, but in reality have some military presence in larger towns) on the way, they wanted to see papers. my brother doesn't have any so they told him to get off. I tried pleading his case, that he was my friend and I didn't know my way around mali otherwise, but the guard demanded that I pay to keep him on. I said fine and started looking for the 500 cfa but he walked away and started questioning other people. he never came back but a handful of people without papers or enough money ended up having to get down. we were in the middle of nowhere. once we were back on the road and at full speed one of the stuntmen who sit on top watching the luggage scaled the side and noticed my brother still riding. he knew we didn't pay and yelled for him to get off since the vehicle operators got fined for carrying too many passengers. it got heated between the two, I lied and said I paid when the guard came to the other side of the van.

once in kita I treated him to a "restaurant" lunch. it's outdoors and they only have a few dishes, but it's relatively expensive and you sit at a table with utensils. they have beer and cold sodas too. once again he left most of his meat alone, offering it to me after I licked my plate clean. I showed him the stage house and let him enjoy some of our taken for granted amenities. with a sofa and some fans and he was passed out in 5 minutes, while I cleaned up and sat on the toilet. we stopped at the real close bar and I bought 5000 cfa worth of gin pocket shots. that's 25 saches, 1250 ml, a 5/7 handle... for ten bucks. very cost effective, but you can imagine how it tastes. we took care of his errands at the market, visited some of our family in the suburbs, and blessed our chief who is at the kita hospital with heart problems. we ended up missing the bus back to kokofata so my brother wanted us to stay the night at his sister's place. this was a wednesday.

all during wednesday I was thinking about everyone I knew meeting in bamako for the weekend. it wasn't supposed to be until friday, but I took the opportunity. might as well go early and save all the extra travelling. plus I could justify a trip to bamako because site was going so well, and really I needed to pick up my broken glasses. so I hopped on the 1 am redeye with all those nostalgic feelings of night prowling the unknown. the bus was garbage, with a student I shared a broken seat that would fall off its supports when we leaned back. he kept falling asleep on me so I made the deal that we would use each other as seatbacks. this wasn't done in bambara or french, I grabbed and turned him and he nodded when he realized what an awesome plan it was. we would've slept the rest of the way if gendarm hadn't stopped us so frequently. three times in the middle of the night makes the trip an hour longer, I got into bamako about an hour before daybreak. an arab I noticed before boarding in kita sought me out when we arrived, he told me not to take the taxi whose driver I had just bargained a fare with. he said he knew the PC bureau and that it wasn't far. I had never paid attention to the way before, so we walked.

he was a cool dude and knew english well enough to carry a conversation. he said I could crash at his place, but K was waiting at the med unit. I shared my cigarettes and he gave me passes to the national museum he worked at. he ended up leaving me in a place I didn't know, but pointed out the rest of the way. once at the med unit a five day binge of chocolate croissants, goat cheese salads, swimming, a/c, movies, and various other secular pleasures commenced. it was a fucking good time. I didn't want to stay from site but leaving saturday turned into sunday morning turned into sunday night into monday night into tuesday afternoon. people are persuasive, and once I get started down something I like... plus I was there to pick up my glasses. we stayed at l'rabelais one night, $70 for what one of the PCVs described as a quaint european designed hotel with small architectural oddities and warm lighting. it really is a diamond in the rough; if you're ever in bamako, and can't handle nasty bathrooms dirty sheets and mosquitoes, then seek it out. all I cared about was the big bed and strong a/c, I didn't even take advantage of the real shower.

twice we made it to l’diplomat, where toumani diabate, apparently the world’s best kora player, entertains weekly. we did crazy mali dancing and drank scotch on rocks, made generous friends and learned useful lessons. they really take care of you if you let it go. but girls have to stay sharp, or take a man, or take a bunch of other girls... anyone in need has intentions. other nights we stayed in, drank wine, played with paint, listened to music. explored the med rooms and did the laundry. just night walking the city is comforting. most people stay outside and talk, kids run around in gangs with makeshift weapons. we saw a dude getting beat with a belt by two others, in the middle of the street this guy was just getting wailed on. we were taught this is how things get worked out. the next morning a dude on his moto pulled a driver from his window and they were slamming heads into the car and holding up traffic. road rage. after a good go around they went their separate ways in peace. morning walks are peaceful too, for reasons I was usually up and around the city by 7 am, getting breakfast and doing errands. I found shortcuts to the bus station bank and white person store.

I can't tell if all this fun is justifiable...

but what fun is?

so it begins

there's not much I can say without a smile on my face after a week at site. I haven't had much time alone, my brother drags me out of bed around 7 and we're usually out past midnight. I eat with my dad who doesn't have much to say, maybe he knows I'm getting it from every angle all the time or that I don't like to talk when I eat. the food is good, right now it's mostly peanut and okra sauce on rice. but the breakfast they bring me sucks. moni is like a plain porridge with little chewy balls of ground corn or millet. I have to add lots of sugar or just eat bread and mayonnaise. it sounds gross but you come to love it... they slaughtered a cow my second day there. I got to watch some and they gave me a good cut of meat. I cooked it with onions peppers garlic and salt and served it over macaroni to my brother and cousin. they tried giving me the meat back as a sign of respect, or they felt uncomfortable indulging themselves. but I made them eat it. and wherever I go I'm handed roasted corncobs, I eat at least six a day.

two days later was the end of ramadan - no more daylight fasting and incessant praying. they requested that I attend one of the final mosque sessions but I couldn't bring myself to accept. several other PCVs have participated, but really I just have no interest. the day after was the 49th anniversary of their independence from france, so the entire weekend was constant eating dancing and playing. the dancing is indescribable madness, they move like they're possessed and it's always in rhythm with the music and in sync with everyone else. I tell them I came to africa to learn to dance and play soccer... so I've been playing soccer everyday, and teaching the kids football. I used candy and 500 to get the boys to give up soccer for a while. they can throw and catch now and we played something like rugby. it was hard getting them to tackle me, they don't want to hurt the white person I'm sure. only after I started running over dudes did they decide to really play. afterwards we chill in my hut and eat roasted corn and drink tea. the furune was my best buy, one will cook outside while five or six sit on my floor mat and I lay in bed.

I've met and had class with the local language tutor. he's the village school's headmaster and was placed in marembilia by the malian government. he speaks a little bit of english, I think he's more interested in learning it than teaching me malinke. my homologue too. I tell everyone I'll teach them english, and that I'll build a plane to take them all to america. then I tell them kids in america go to school and adults go to work for eight hours a day. their demeanor changes until they find out how much money americans make. they get it and they want it, but they don't realize it's more important to make it here. anyways my village isn't bambara, whose language I had been learning during training. most people can understand me but it's more bullshit my ears have to sort through when people start running their mouths a million miles an hour. my tutor's use will be for leaning french. he teaches french to middle schoolers starting in october so I'll sit in class every morning. I think it'll be school I can handle, breeze instead of a/c, language of love instead of differential equations, mischievous kids instead of young professionals in the making.

everyday I make sure to do an errand since we're discouraged to start projects before we've been fully assimilated (they suggest after IST, which is in december). I visited the broken pumps and community garden, they want those fixed and that systematically irrigated. they also want a bridge, but I've initially decided this to be a superfluous request. I'll be able to do a proper needs assessmend for the village once I have a confident grasp of the language. I've seen their unimproved nyegens and lack of personal hygiene, which might be better targets for my efforts. I've realized behavior change is more important here than tangible constructions. I went pig hunting with my homologue and he showed me his peanut cotton rice and millet farms. we rode bikes another morning to the village where the family of his second wife lives. they're in worse shape, they have one broken pump and the wells run dry in the hot season. but they make a mean peanut and okra sauce and they like to hear about america. they fed me milk and sugar and millet powder for dessert so I'll probably end up doing work there as well.

I biked 20 k with my brother to kokofata, my local market town. right now everything is green so the ride is beautiful, and we got to walk our bikes across waist-high creeks where the topless women wash clothes and dishes. in town he sold a sack of charcoal while I met the mayor and his cronies, whose place I'll keep my bike at when I need to catch transport out of town. about 2/3 the way back my bike unravelled. we scooped up all the pieces we could pick out of the mud and puddles. I was pissed because I didn't have any water and hadn't eaten in six hours, and it got worse when I had to greet every damn person on the way. I didn't want to deal with it but malians will make you, they don't let you continue without a smile on your face.

next post is about my unplanned and extended vacation to bamako.

swear-in & risky business

the night before swear-in was our talent show and superlative announcement. some committee self-formed from our stage decided to implement the high school tradition of mosts and bests. I'm most likely to fall asleep behind my aviators and end up in a malian jail. sweet right. the talent show was the highlight of the evening with 12 quality presentations. I usually avoid this type of deal, but there was lots of good singing dancing and beats. and buffering with social lubricant cures stage fright. I was part of the circus act, the freak show, with kat sara and ali (hula hoopers), zan jeremy and I (jugglers), and clemente (freak). the girls hooped sexy well, jeremy kept his juggle and after Zan and I lost ours we did chair walks and hung from the hangar rafters. for the finale, clemente came from the crowd sat at front stage and held his leg behind his head. I lit six cigarettes and put them in everyone's mouth while they were in action.

we didn't win. to forget the painful loss we went to the trash bar. there my glasses fell apart, foreshadowing the return to tubaniso. I rode back against better advisement without my eyes and in the dark. so as expected I ended up face-planting the side of a ditch, leaving pieces of my beautiful mug in the grass and mud. K helped me out of that hole but then it rained on us. we walked our bikes probably a mile the rest of the way and directly to the med unit for cleanup. I had to scramble the next morning, I wasn't in my room for wakeup and we had to get to the embassy. I took my first mali walk of shame, trying to shrug off lots of omgs and duuudes. swear-in was in brutally sweltering heat, but it was quite impressive to walk the embassy grounds and take the oath of service. another PCV and I ran through and laid on the thick green grass surrounding the embassy, he made the point that we won't see the kind of grass we're used to for a while. I shook the country director's hand afterwards and he just smiled upon reviewing my face. I looked fresh out of a bar fight or skating wipeout for all the pretty group pictures. from the embassy we were bussed to the american club to swim eat drink and work toward starting the wild swear-in night right.

before everyone else got good and deep, our stage was nicknamed risky business. every stage is nicknamed by the previous year's stage. many of these extracurriculars seem juvenile but the name is somewhat appropriate. I heard that my mishap the night before was mentioned as an example. by the time we made it to the pirate's club everyone was loose. I always enjoy seeing that, everyone coming out and drinking their face off, everyone without the mask of inhibition. it was a good time anyway, got to go out with my girl and get loud with the boys. we polished off a nalgene of jack daniels (spent extra for that sweet stuff) and went dancing at the second club, a legit two story deal where no one could hear each other. we were beyond that anyway, we just smiled and moved together.

somewere along the way we lost our room key. we were staying at an inn different than everyone else and we had problems with the front desk, at whichever early hour in the morning it was. they supposedly didn't have a spare, since we're in mali you know, and nothing is the same as it is in the states. good thing K knows french, we had to argue for another room. when we woke up they presented a sparkly new spare key, only after more arguing. we were supposed to have sessions back at tubaniso but K had a bad foot so we went to the med office. we stayed there the whole day, we had the entire building to ourselves. movies and a balcony and a real bathroom with a toilet tub and sink. they really spoil you when you're sick... I was just along for the ride. and I went into town to get us lunch. white cheddar and chocolate from the white person store and greasy delicious spring rolls and sandwiches from the vietnamese stand by the bureau. it was a good final day in the city.

I had to go back to tubaniso that night for the guest dinner. we were supposed to invite someone from our homestay so I chose my uncle. he got to eat cake with chocolate frosting and drink cold sodas. we left for our banking towns the next morning. most of kita-kaw, the group of us seven who bank in Kita, spent the next few days under the influence and buying essentials. I got a malian charcoal stove and a big thick bed, cheese pasta chocolate and condensed milk.

I get installed on 9/17...

we're out

this is a sweet job, right now work is cruising and talking to villagers... the dudes outside the butiki, the ladies who sell coconut and frybread on my corner, the kid gangs that roam the streets at night. I like riding my bike after it rains so you can't go fast or you'll get all dirty. then stay dirty for two years because you can never really get your clothes clean and then don't care if your whites stay brown. and I like walking around at night without a flashlight, because if you do the frogs will jump into the light and disappear. a week later your light won't work and you'll find a dead frog inside.

we left homestay yesterday morning. people were crying, my dad and lots of the women. minata is my little sister, like three, who walks everywhere with me and carries my water bottle. I feel like such a baller with her on my wing. all sorts of kids always try and carry my shit, but I usually only share my candy and gato with her. she's cute with big puffy cheeks and little gold earrings. she's always smiling, especially when I spin her around in the air. she falls no matter how carefully I put her down. my uncle told me to sneak her inside my bag before we left for good. but we'll be back, with all the soundougouba boys.

for our last night, two of us managed to top the forbidden rock next to the dugutiki's. we were trying our hardest to taste the rainbow that was out. instead I almost ate rock on the way down, it was a tricky climb. a good rush though, like having just had sex. I smoked a cigarette afterwards. when I got home my mom confronted me about not telling her I was leaving for good the next morning so I hugged her and she gave me some coconut. she wears her intolerance like my mother, as a mask, but all you have to do is smile and the debt is washed away. even the dugutiki knows it; before we climbed the rocks we had a final session at his place for a formal farewell, during which he stated that we were all raised by very good mothers. living speaking and laughing with these people goes a far way because it lets them know we actually give a shit.

last night I skipped dinner and made ramen at the trash bar. it was elegant... whiskey pouches and drinking from the bowl and a bluegrass music box. my kind of date. the next morning I had to make the bus for the field trip to several national departments with the water and sanitation heads. the buildings are modest concrete cubes tucked into dirty corners that are abound in bamako. we met all the people in charge and were extended full support. everyone is excited to have us out in the field, their gratitude is genuine and they're anxious to overcome the vast language and cultural differences we'll soon be having to work around. during one of the meet and greets I realized that we're involved with the small but strong government organizations that were occurring in the US 200 years ago. another perk. mali has been independent for 49 years and a democracy for 18 years. it's a baby thrown into an incredibly fast and technical bush without centuries of health and education for a foundation.

just imagine. america was under british colonial rule for about a century and a half. mali was under french colonial rule for about 2/3 a century. in half a century they were able to establish a trademark democracy in west africa, after settling political unrest without major bloodshed or civil war. they're quick, relatively speaking. and they've been untouched and untapped. but everything's relative. who's to say they won't catch this world wide wave and somehow manage not to wipe out. I've already mentioned their superior grace...

next post is about PC swear-in fun.

later

first real trip

so we've just come back from our site visit, the places we'll be for the next two years. it would normally bother me to have my future so definitely planned. my new hood is marembilia, which is 80 km from the banking town (if you're interested in pointing me out, google kita mali and it's 60 km west then 20 km south from there) and maybe 1000 people living in between corn and cotton fields. it's rainy season so the stalks stand high, turning the village into a maze that I kept getting lost in. no problem, just say hello sit and drink tea. I'll do this for the next three months... the village is surrounded by rock ridges and dotted with mango and citrus trees, some really good ones for climbing.

we climbed trees on the way back from the tubaniso bar the night before we went to site. we went all the way to the top and shared pocket shots, we could see out to the bamako lights. when we got back to the training center we roasted marshmallows on the bball blacktop and talked to one of the malian cultural facilitators about polygamy. the girls didn't want to hear any of it. I guess I don't care one way or the other, I usually tell the dudes here good work when they start counting their wives by hand. I do care about female genital mutilation though, which they say is performed on 95% of the female population over 15. and they wait until right before they get married. sucky. I'm surprised more don't aspire to become whores. I would. especially with all the laundry to do. it would take me all day to do mine, if the women didn't do it for me.

anyways site was chill. I get two, count it, two mud huts with termite infested thatched roofs. I like when I'm sleeping and the termites that land on my mosquito net squirm through the little holes and land on my face or somehow climb into my shorts. maybe that's what crabs feel like. and my nyegen is about a head and a half too short... and there's no goddamn lid! I'll have to make one when I get back for good. and a pot to sit on as well. screw decking out my room, I'll never be in it. however the nyegen could definitely use a seat and some tile. the food wasn't bad, kayes region is pretty well known for tiga degenna, which translates as peanut butter sauce and can look like anything from Mr. D, especially when they're pouring it, to black tar. but it tastes good, better than most things. and they already figured out I like the spice, so I get a few peppers with each meal. now to get them to feed me the sweet seri for breakfast... though they do have something that I haven't seen anywhere else en brousse - dessert. I think my jatiki (host father) is just a G like that. it's fresh milk mixed with millet powder and sugar. we aren't supposed to drink fresh milk because of parasites and TB risks. I can't really justify having done that, except maybe just because it tastes so good.

didn't do much else during site visit, got offered some women and saw a 12 hour old baby that they wanted me to name. it's weird, the babies don't come out black, or at least this one didn't. I picked Angel, short for my sister Angelica. I guess the woman who had just given birth was working up until the day, and she was already up and greeting people 12 hours postpartum. these chicks don't fuck around. I saw one lady walking through muddy bamako around motos and buses with a baby on her back, a hand full of bags, and a ten gallon bucket on her head. she made it look like nothing. grace baby.

the way back to the kita stage house was long. friday morning I was on my way by 8:00, via donkey cart. I tried convincing my jatiki to let me ride my own donkey, but I kept translating their words as stubborn ass. so off we went, one of the dugutiki's (village chief) sons was my chauffer. he went through at least 10 2-inch thick branches beating the animal into our direction of travel. stubborn ass indeed. it was a rough four hour trip to kokofata. I passed the time sharpening my slingshot skills and learning how to master the donkey. the way was pretty too, lots of rocky hills and climbing spots and big trees and hidden creeks. when we rolled into kokofata I was greeted well. there I had a rice and beef sauce lunch with my contact and his buddies and they hooked me up with some other street food. and they tried giving me one of their girls for dessert. after three hours the transport came - a rice delivery truck that doubled as a bus. it took me 60 km of the rest of the 80 km to kita. on the way we stopped for some dude who wrecked his moto. he was scratched up pretty bad, but if you can walk you have to pay full fare. the driver bitched to me in french about the guy wanting a free ride. I laughed and we smoked cigarettes.

I saw monkeys about halfway there. I thought they were big cats at first, they were burnt orange with long tails and ran down tree trunks on all fours. but when they stopped and turned towards the road I could see flat faces and side by side eyes. they ran together in a pack weaving in and out like fire. it started raining and the windows didn't roll up. I liked it, daytime rains are pretty mild. but when I got to kita the streets were a mess. I got dopped off on the outskirts of town and I walked around for an hour trying to find my way. the PCVs told us to ask locals where the mission was when we got into town, but no one knew what the hell I was talking about. I eventually figured it out and about 300 yards from the house a PC transport passed me. how convenient. I was pissed and just wanted to walk the rest, but they stopped and took my bags for me. a PCT buddy had gin pocket shots lined up for my arrival, and we went to a restaurant for dinner. they only had a few steak plates left, I got a steak plate and chicken plate. and for lunch yesterday in bamako I ate a chawarma frites sandwich (big lamb and fries burrito), half of someone's burger complet (big roll hamburger with fried egg), a plate of fries, a couple of cokes, a double ice cream (pistachio and chocolate), a chocolate eclair and marlboro reds. I found a pack with a street vendor for 600 cfa ($1.20). I'm getting my weight back.

homestay calls me the stomach.

first trip

we went to bamako the other night. possibly against advisement, I'll leave out details. the transportation there was a mess so I was having fun. we got dropped off right in downtown and needed to get to one of the outer sectors and close to the medical office. the taxi was expensive and the driver wouldn't take all of us in one cab. we said bs so we tried getting there on another sumatra bus (really a big green van without seats and packed 20 deep). it drove around and past all sorts of familiar parts until it dropped us off in the middle of some slummy place. really loud steamy and chaotic. it was like nyc with no sidewalks and muddy nyegen water streets.

I forgot to tell what a nyegen (knee egg en) was in the previous post. it's the unroofed area that you shit in with maybe a ten inch cement hole in the ground. the hole goes to a big ditch underneath the nyegen that, if you're ever brave enough to look down into, you'll see everyone's waste getting turned and churned by fly larvae and worms. you can even hear it. if you're lucky it'll have a lid for cover, I'm not so. when I use it all the flies swarm up from the hole and try to suck face or find a home in my ear or up my nose or on my toes. anywhere flies bother the hell out of me, I assume all were just having fun in the nyegen. so anyway nyegen water is basically everything you do in the nyegen that doesn't go into the pit. pissing, bathing, whatever else (greywater) goes out a drainage hole and into the streets. this is what we were walking in.

people were almost getting run over, holding onto the sumatra and being dragged down the street. we walked for maybe 45 minutes, so we must've been dropped off at least three miles from the restaurant. we took a soundougouba local with us which I think helped a lot. instead of being driven everywhere he just kept asking the way every couple hundred meters. the people I was with were worried that he didn't know where he was going, or that it would take too long. he saved us money at least, which turned out to be pretty significant considering how relatively expensive dinner was. a JD single was 3500 cfa (~$7) and the personal pizzas were at least 5000 cfa. granted, for me, nothing beats american whiskey and hot greasy cheese, but the cost hurt when we've been living off nickles and dimes. I mean the pocket double-shot whiskeys are 300 cfa. that's 60 cents. three or four bucks and you're as golden as your drink. luckily one of the PCTs we met there brought a few with her, so we ended up sharing them. we drank and ate and smoked cigarettes and played pool at this place I don't really want to go back to even though it's where all the PC scandal goes down. or so we heard. the air was snobby, even around PCVs. we tried sending back ice cream that one of our homestay people didn't like and the waitor said she couldn't not like it because she was from the village and wouldn't know what ice cream was. dick. and some americans just turned their head and had that awkward situation look that I always saw back home.

getting back was just as fun as getting there. the girls we met tried to haggle their taxi driver to get back to their homestays. they know french, none of us did so we just let the guy fuck us over. and he did. first wrong decision was taking the scenic route. we ended up waiting 20 minutes for a herd of hundreds of cattle that was blocking the street. it was really loud, like the night was bellowing under the final weight of the day's departure. after we crossed the river and were back en brousse the driver hooked us up with some tunes. rod stewart - young turks. I don't even like rod stewart, but it was appropriate, and strangely surreal. and almost any music sounds good once you're without it. I even like kitkat bars now. soon after the tire blew out and the driver wanted to collect the full amount. one of us flipped and the driver changed his demeanor. I guess it was about time. he agreed to pay a sumatra out of the full fare we owed for the rest of the trip. our local wasn't helping too much; malians get tired and they wear they're disinterest obviously, oh and apparently they don't travel with spares. so we paid in full and hopped on the next sumatra which only took us to kobilakoro. we had to hoof the next seven or eight km, which wasn't bad under moonlight, but it certainly worked off any buzz we might've taken to sleep with us.

so I had bacterial dysentery earlier this week. of course, it happens as soon as we're back in tubaniso, or "dove house" or PC training center outside of bamako. I really don't like this place, I like my homestay. miss it even. the dysentery is just no eating and lots of nyegenning. no energy and losing weight, I'm down 15 pounds from when I got to Mali. it's not a lot compared to some others, but it's certainly a 15 I can't afford to lose. both of my roommates here are at the med office in bamako. now I have a viral infection that gets to the muscles and cartilage in my chest. the doc couldn't do anything for it, she said to just ride it out. it's pretty painful to breath and I've been fevering 102+ for the past couple of days. I can feel it subsiding now though, and we visit our permanent site tomorrow. once again I'm fine upon leaving the training center. and this will be the last about sickness talk. everyone's getting it and more will come. it's a drag really, but either shut up or die. haha just kidding. but not really. okay I'm out.

next is word from permanent site visit...

introduction

what to write...

I like it here, but I don't think I've processed things enough to have a that sort of feeling. so I'll stay factual.

malaria prophylaxis kicked my ass the first week. i was depressed and the doc said if it didn't turn around then I should consider ETing (early termination). I was fine the next day. the meds gave me wicked dreams too, quite a treat that's been. one was about meeting missing links to monkeys, bugs, fish and flowers, another was about a slime princess at the foot of an ancient s. american civilization. and they're all so vivid. once we were out at homestay everything was gravy. my new name is tumani (two mon ee) sidibe but the streets call me cekaceka. It means big boss or womanizer or the one who speaks about nothing. I didn't take more than a day to get used to the food and lack of amenities. breakfast is always instant coffee or tea, french bread and seri (like oatmeal or cream of wheat). they put lots of sugar in their hot drinks, it took a few mornings to get my uncle to put the sugar for my coffee into the seri. i told him black unsweetened coffee and sweet warm cereal is breakfast ameriki. once a week I get about a dozen hard boiled eggs. lunch is usually rice with sauce and some type of meat. the best is a red garlic and onion sauce with hot peppers and beef. I always look forward to lunch. morning language session is a drag... school's halfway around the world and I'll still hate it. I prefer to do my learning during nighttime chats around the village. after second session I'll get together with other PCTs and kill time. we go to baguineda camp for cold drinks or we climb the rock ridges around town. It's pretty up there... we can see our whole village of soundougouba, the treeline along the river and a whole lotta sky. it's just bigger here, like the earth inverted. I'm usually back with my family around dusk for dinner and chatting. dinner's been lots of things... toh, macaroni (mali fast food), meat and potatoes, cucumber and tomato salad. most of this isn't what they eat, we get hooked up because the PC pays them to feed us. after dinner I study with my uncle or walk around town with a local friend and talk it up with other concessions. we'll play mali cards or drink tea or just work on bambara. a few times we've made it to the bar in b camp, but it only serves malty beer. the bar down the street from the training site has pocket gin shots, which are more conducive to my good night. but the good thing about walking home from b camp is misi sogo for 4th meal - smoked and chopped beef leg tossed with powdered salt and onions.

now food aside and onto the juicy stuff... there are countless firsts you experience when living en brousse, many of which are easy subjects for nasty bathroom humor. the first first that comes to mind is happening to see someone relieve himself while I was eating lunch. not quite the old in n out. there is no toilet paper, so it will be the first time you wipe your ass with your hand. i hope. if your concession doesn't differentiate, you'll shower in the same unroofed area that you shit. and you'll shake hands with people who don't wash their hands after... you get the idea. I guess my water sanitation sector has a broader range of issues to address than I initially anticipated. soap, along with frogs and having your picture taken, are considered bad luck around most parts of mali. there's also lots of boobies and naked kids, which is all good. the first day at homestay some lady pushing 100 walked up shirtless and shook my hand with this wiry toothless grin. it only takes once to get used to these things, I got broken in to that one pretty quickly. the wake up calls are a different story. if I manage to sleep through the 5 am loudspeaker call to prayer (mali is mostly muslim) and then half an hour later the retarded rooster crowing right outside my door, I have to put up with my uncle making sure I have all the time in the god forsaken early morning to get ready for the day. whatever at least I can sleep at night, many others struggle with the heat still. I guess I have my arizona junior year landlord to thank for that. you guys know, a year and a half of 100+ degrees with no a/c. even though you fuckers pussied out and got personal window units. all in preparation...

the women are gradually becoming beautiful. full figured and amazingly graceful, and if you smile they smile. but I'm digging blonde hair and fair skin. and getting hit by everything here. I should've guessed it would take more than myself to take this in as best I can.

soso likes you because you smell so sweet.

more to come people.