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?