A Puppy Named Guacamole

Hey populace!! It’s been A LONG TIME!

I’ll put up photos next post because I’m ridiculous and forgot my cord to upload photos onto my laptop at homestay, an hour away from here at training site, BUT, to continue with my life, basically, some things have gotten better, and other things I’ve been thinking about have become elucidated over the past three weeks.

Let’s start with that Bambara! How’s it coming? It’s going amazingly. I’m actually legitimately having conversations with people I am growing to sincerely appreciate about things that matter to me. The other day, I was not only able to start asking what we were having for dinner, for example, and what I actually wanted to eat, but was able to say, “I think that, when people are good people, G-d gives them zame [a fried rice dish they serve here with vegetables and meat sometimes that is DELICIOUS].” I was also able to tell my mom not only that I wanted to go to Sikasso region for service, but that, “Every night, I dream of Sikasso, and its vegetables, and its fruit, and I’m happy.” She almost fell off her chair laughing. Like, my language has gotten to the point where I can be funny. One of the things I always loved about being Speech Captain in high school was that I could help people find their personality in their voice so that what they said, regardless of who had written or edited it, was theirs’. I can finally do that, to some limited extent, in Bambara. And it’s incredibly empowering. To be able to say that I miss my father, or that I feel bad about my Bambara sometimes because I promise, I promise, I’m not 5 years old but I know I really sound like it. To be able to say that my mother was a beautiful, strong womyn, or to say that the future, basically, might freak me out. Language gives you this incredible ability to feel in control. And that is really something I took for granted, in my language classes my whole life, or even in Brazil to some extent. I never looked at conversations as opportunities to say myself, really.

And I think, the more I’ve meditated on that, the more I’ve come to realize that that lack of acknowledgement, of the power of speaking yourself into your sentences, showing yourself through the words you string together, that absence of understanding of power leads to feeling powerless. I haven’t spent a lot of time in my life acknowledging that I am speaking and therefore actively creating myself, my limits, my desires, and who I want to be. It makes you say words like “No” softer when you really mean them. It makes you trail off your sentences before your thoughts have really been heard yet.

Language is powerful. Lesson learned, and a strong lesson I want to share, especially through some of the work I might be doing at my site!

Like WHAT? And, WHERE’S YOUR SITE?!?? My site is a village of 2600 people called Ziangolodougou. It’s south of Sikkassoville, in the Sikasso region of Mali, south of Bamako, the capitol. It’s the part of Mali that is the least hot, and, because it has the most rain (it rains from March to October, albeit more drizzles and lighter rains on the tail ends of that time span), it has the most nutritious variety of vegetables, fruit, and crops available year-round. LIKE: peanuts, millet, rice, corn, beans, sorghum, cassava, mangos, papayas, pineapple, avocados (YEAR-ROUND), sweet/potatoes, yams, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, green beans, sweet peas, and MORE. I really wanted to be posted to Sikasso region, so I’m incredibly psyched. The only downside is the long rainy season, especially when you think about solar charging capabilities, but I think I’ll figure it out with a screen door set-up and a little sunlight during the rain. We’ll see.

There is no market in my village, even though we have a lot of crops, and they want my to possibly do some secondary project work with womyn and gardening. My market town is Zegoua, which is 10km away and I can bike ride once a week to for their market day, as well as to get my furniture made if I need to (we’ll see what I need this week when I visit tomorrow!), and to get internet access. Zegoua, as well as Ziangolodougo, are on a main road, so travel is pretty easy. I can get to Sikasso or Bamako any day of the week, multiple times a day, because I’m on the main road, really close to the Ivory Coast border. Like, 15km! Which is really exciting. It’s apparently less time for me to get to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s capitol on their coast, than it is for me to get to Bamako! Does somebody hear interesting vacations coming on this season? Because I do.

My town also does not have a CSCOM, which is the most local clinics available to villages, where there are pharmacies, vaccination hangars, and maternity wards. My village only has a maternity house with some midwives and some Relais, which are community health worker volunteers who can do vaccination days, for example, out in the community outside of a CSCOM, and prevention work through workshops and demonstrations of how to make things like ameliorated (more nutritious) porridge for growing babies. I’ll be working with them and then probably biking to the CSCOM and radio station in Zegoua to do some work some days every week. But it depends on what it’s like. I’ll see tomorrow!

I’ll also be apparently living in a two-room house with a patio in the same general concession yard as a family who will be my host-family at site. My family is composed of a husband with one wife (yet again, and that’s a little bit of a coincidence that both of my families haven’t been polygamous) and five kids. I don’t think I have a nyegen yet (they have yet to construct my outdoors bathroom), and I may not have a roof (???!?) yet, but hey, sounds like an adventure’s afoot! I’ve met my homeologue (hopefully my future work counterpart deigned by the village who has traveled to our training site to work with me a bit and get some training before we go to the village together this week). He’s been a homeologue before and seems quite competent, which is nice, because I really want to be able to do good work with my counterpart as well as like them as a person. Person-wise, we seem to get along well as well. He laughs at some of my grammatically incorrect (I’m sure) jokes. He’s happy I know a fair bit of Bambara and helps me with vocab-learning already if I ask him what something is in French, which he also knows (G-D SAVE THE QUEEN AND BLESS MY LIFE). Hope my family’s nice! Especially since, albeit with a wall between our houses, I’ll be living with them.

Work-wise, it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of malnutrition work, especially with new mothers about infant nutrition and nutrition for children under the age of 5, prenatal consultations, malaria prevention, water source maintenaince and washing hands, and… (drumroll) FAMILY PLANNING, I WIN. Also, they want me to do health education with school kids and mothers, and work on possible small economic projects and shea production with womyn (can you say healthy skin and hair, Akinyi? Yes, you self-absorbed mutha, ya can).

I’M SUPER EXCITED, but also curious as to how much what they’ve told me I might do matches up with what I might actually do. I definitely am walking into this with a healthy relationships agenda. If I could work with womyn and, more importantly, men, in schools to discuss what healthy relationships are and how it feels good to be treated and to treat others keeping their feelings and sense of self-worth in mind, I’d be happy with the work I’d done here. We’ll see what my community needs, what I can do in my official work and what I can do on my own through the friendships I’m beginning to seriously understand I’ll form while I’m here (because before, I thought I’d just be working in Mali in a bubble without anyone to ever speak to, but now understand that knowing Bambara also allows me not to be isolated and to be at home here).

…And what else is going on, besides your incredibly anxious, crazy self pondering yo’ future? I’ve been thinking a lot about, along the lines of learning myself in another language, the power of the colonization of language, and therefore, the mind. Basically, when the French came in and invaded Mali and forced groups of children at gunpoint to go to schools when the missionaries could not convince them and made them learn in French, they didn’t plan on ever having anyone translate that forced knowledge into Bambara. THAT means, almost virtually all words concerning educational tools and industry in Bambara are Frambara, or French with Bambara pronunciation. Like chalk (lakere), plane (avion), the time (5am, for example, is cinq heure waati, with only ‘waati’ meaning ‘time’ in Bambara), office (bureau), government (gouvernement), president (presidan), and the list continues. Sometimes, I just want to scream at my teachers (when it’s obviously not their fault), SAY THINGS IN YOUR LANGUAGE, BECAUSE IT’S LEGITIMATE AND CAN EXPRESS YOUR WORLD OUTSIDE OF THE COLONIAL FORCE THAT MIGHT HAVE INTRODUCED THEM. It makes me irrationally angry at how we sometimes fail to construct things within the proud context of our individual rich histories and heritage. Does that make sense? It really pisses me off.

Otherwise, making friends is nice J. I feel like I have an actual set of people I can go to when I’m really upset, and that they will make me feel better. At first, it’s hard, because you’re a trainee with a bunch of strangers on top of living with strangers who speak a strange language different from your own. Now, it’s hard in a different way, though: I have some people I really like here that I’ve met, my mother almost cried when I left home-stay for these next 11 days to visit site for the first time (she really loves me, and it feels miraculous to have that motherly support and absolutely sincere love with someone I cannot even help but feel anything but vulnerable around and who I know loves me simply because I am and not because of who I can put on…since I literally can’t, in Bambara, really), and I suddenly am realizing, my last months in the States and with friends was mostly focused on talking about what I didn’t know I’d be doing in a place I hadn’t known anything about yet. It was almost…blank, in a way. A lot of waiting, and talking about waiting, and putting things on hold, and weaning myself from things I wasn’t sure I’d have, need, or want for two years. A lot of anxiety, and suddenly, Peace Corps and trainees are constructing my new life here. Actively, quickly, and I’m just in it as long as I can make it.

Who knows. Maybe I hate site and I go home. Maybe I make it a year and something happens to me (G-d forbid) and I have to leave. Maybe I get through almost 2 years and choose to extend my service another year, because I loved it so much. All I know right now, is that I have to be open to not knowing a lot.

And, I’m okay with it, I think. Right now. I’m okay, with the incredibly long training sessions without a break that echo government bureaucracy out my fuming ears and onto the annoyingly efficiently fly-attracting main hangar, with not knowing people I think I love as well as those I love at home, not having a home until someone gives me one, and living out of suitcases, both physically and packaging away my feelings frequently to be able to deal with kids screaming “white person” when they see me outside their house concessions or with adults laughing at almost everything I try to say in their language at times. It’s okay right now. And that, inandofitself, means I feel like I’ve accomplished something being here.

BIRTHDAY COMING UP SOON! And, thank you so much for all your continued support. You beautiful people who care about me make this a wonderful experience to share. Also, on Skype NEXT Monday and Tuesday night (12am-2am, East Coast time, in 8 days). Lemme know if you wanna chat! And, NEW ADDRESS TO SEND THINGS TO IF YOU WANNA SEND ‘EM will be given out in a week. Thanks in advance to all of you who already sent me some love! Greatly appreciated and loved already J. You guys are great.

ALSO, side projects I’m already planning for my site:

-PUPPY NAMED ‘GUACAMOLE’ (will be able to vaccinate at marketday and deworm, and will have flew collar sent from the States so that I can love it freely J; also, will leave it in village after my service ends with someone I trust loves the puppy and will treat it well, as a legacy of respect for an animal for my village to see and hopefully incorporate into how they themselves treat their animals. See how I’m doing that? I’m excited.)

-Drying fruit

-Making wine out of fruit

-Gardening (sunflowers, moringa, avocado, and mango trees, soy beans, lettuce and spinach, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and green beans)

YAY. I love it.

Ate logo, Populace

I fa a kani, barisa I a kani (Your father is good, because you are good.)

So, it’s pretty hard for me to describe my home stay family in a way that would do them any justice. To start with the basics…
You’re staying with a homestay family? I thought you were at a site somewhere far away right now! So, I’m not a volunteer yet. Like I said in post Welcome Back and a Disclaimer, I’m training right now to be sworn in (hopefully) as a volunteer on January 6, 2012. What’s training? Good question. Training in Peace Corps Mali (it varies from country program to country program, as Peace Corps is pretty decentralized) is basically 2 months and 1 week of language and technical skills training, with a heaping side of cultural learning tacked on. We stay in a home stay alone (thought with other volunteers in home stays in the same village/mile) for about 1.5 months of it, and have language learning every day but Sundays, with some cross culture lessons here and there on respect for elders or gender roles (was a hard one for me, coming back to that one). Then 3 weeks are spent at the lovely Tubaniso, our training site about half an hour outside of Bamako, the capitol of Mali. We have most of our technical training at Tubaniso. When I say “technical training,” I mean that, as a health sector volunteer, I’m going to be…
-Doing ameliorated porridge demonstrations só that people know how to make their daily porridge they have a lot here call “seri” or “moni,” based off of rice or corn frequently, more nutritious
-Weighing babies at CSCOMs (Malian health clinics on the most local level that do vaccinations, have maternity wards frequently, and have beds for when people are sick but not sick enough to go to larger health centers) and doing malnutrition info sessions
-Painting murals (personally the one thing I’m the most excited about!! I think it’ll be the most meditative.) about different healthy habits, like good breastfeeding techniques, etc
-AIDS/STI education workshops
-etc.
So, a lot of this training goes down at our training site. My village I’m in home stay in is called Montougula, and it’s comprised of basically 16 villages. I’m in one, and my father is the mayor of Montougula proper. He speaks both Bambara, the language that I’m learning for my service, and French. Which means that, my language skills have gotten far better in terms of French, because the little things that I can’t understand in Bambara that they say or the things I want to say that are too complex to say in my limited Bambara, I can say in French. With Bambara, it’s going quite well! I can say enough that I’m aware of what’s going on through a mix of the random words and gesticulation. I’m feeling more and more confident. It’s hard when people speak fast, but otherwise, I’m feeling good about my language skills. Because I’m really auditory and write down everything new that we go over in class vocab-wise, it’s going really well and I can’t complain much. It just kinda sucks existentially to not be able to express yourself to anyone but other Peace Corps people for months. And it’s only been one month away from home so far. It makes you think about how much you take the interaction you have with people you know really well for granted, like I feel I did in the US where I culd just pick up a phone and not worry about how much credit it costs to talk to someone for hours about nothing.
My mom is amazing. One thing that is really common here that is a bit different for me, as Mali is a Muslim country (90% Muslim, 9% Animist, which essentially means traditional African religion and tendencies in religious practices, and 1% Christian), is the common practice of polygamy. Men usually have between two and four wives here. That phrase alone is a tad different for me to say, as I’m used to kind of being a gender warrior of sorts in the states who advocates for these wonderful healthy relationships that most people in this world unfortunately do not have. As an advocate for healthy relationships, I’m avidly against gender imbalance in relationships as well. Thus, in Mali, where our cross culture sessions as well as input from Malians I have asked have proved to suggest, it is very different for me to think of womyn as people in relationships who do not have decision-making power or who can be one of many. I know that this also happens in the US, clearly, though albeit not too often in the form of polygamous marriage or relationships. But it does happen. It’s just a different world for me to hear that “…Men would never go to womyn for any decision in the home. That is a last resort.” Or, that, “If a wife dies, a man is left alone with no one to care for his children…[so] it’s better to have more than one wife [in case this happens.] [But if the man dies,] a womyn will be able to get married again easily, [so she doesn’t need many husbands.]” On the same note, the idea of spousal abuse, which is considered culturally acceptable here (for men to beat their wives), is very different for me to consider as a norm. I personally have done a lot of domestic violence and sexual assault work in the US, and it’s difficult for me to not be apart of a movement to help womyn have more say in relationships in general. I must stress that all of these problems are problems around the world and not just in Mali—surely, we have several people in the US who believe it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife, believe that womyn should not make decisions not only in marriage but in general, and believe that men should have womyn in their lives in case things go wrong but do not believe the reverse because womyn can handle hardship. The difference here is that these are widely held beliefs, to what I have seen, instead of beliefs that people might keep to themselves, as I feel they do in the US, for fear of being seen as unPC.
Back to ma host mama, I love her. And I hope that all contributed to me explaining that my family seems quite atypical for a muslim one in Mali. As my father is the mayor, my mother doesn’t have to do many things around the house, since she always has help. Besides cooking and taking care of her children, she can spend hours a day just chatting with me about whatever we want to chat about, or making green tea, which is stronger here than in the US and really big as a social activity to make in these little teeny pots and have 3-4 rounds of in teeny glasses while chatting for hours (LOVE IT). She told me at some point the title of this post, “I fa a kani, barisa I a kani.” I feel it’s the most appropriate thing any one has said to me while I’ve been here to share with you all, because it reflected, for me, so much warmth and understanding that I find abundant in my conversations I have with the Malians I’ve met in Montougula. Not to exoticize or whip out that “friendly native” bizz, but when you act like you care here, people care about you, remember you, and look out for you. They want you to be happy if you care about them and ask them how they’re doing through a series of what can feel like quite lengthsome greetings at times, paha. (i.e., “Good morning! How’s your family doing? How’re you doing? How’s your father? How’s your mother? How’d you sleep? G-d bless the day.” AND THAT’S ONLY A MORNING GREETING, TO ONE PERSON. My grandmother will give me several blessings every morning at night, to which I solemnly respond, ‘Amina!’) I thought, because of womyns’ sole role in raising children most of the time here, that telling my mother about my family structure in the US would be quite a stretch, But when I told her that my mother had me when she was in her early 30s, died, and that my father raised me since I was 6, she said that he must be good, “because [I] am good.” Bambara works in this wonderful way where you say what someone does or what’s happening before you say how you feel about it or why it is evident. So having her cite me as how she knows my father is good, without even knowing him and only hearing about him, was beautiful for me.
Which goes to, I have been given a Malian name by my host family! My name is Masira Coulibaly. My grandmother’s name is Masira too, but that’s all I know regarding the meaning of my first name. My last name is a noble name in the Bambara ethnic group, the largest in Mali. It was a name that a prominent king held at one point. In order to make more amicable relationships with everyone in his domain, he utilized the “joking cousins” phenomenon (this thing where people with certain last names joke with each other to ease tensions between groups and families for the past 800 years in Mali because a king said they should, and it’s super fun—we usually just call each other “bean eaters” because the indirect joke that people fart a lot here is hilarious to Malians, which I kinda love but can be weird if you think about it for too long). He made it so that everyone was his joking cousin. So, everyone that I meet says I both sound like a donkey and indirectly that I fart a lot, whenever they learn my name. It’s kind of a trip.
I have four host-brothers and one host-sister, who I believe is usually off at school. My second oldest host brother, who’s 10, loves me to itty bitty bits and pieces, which I loooooove. He holds a flashlight for me to prepare my most coveted salads that few trainees get in homestay (food is mostly variations of risen millet, corn meal, rice, porridge, potatoes, and sauces with a good bit of oil). He follows me around the village. We love each other. And now, when we play slap jack, which was my cultural gift to Mali thusfar, whenever I win, like I always do (you know), he’s started doing some trash talk back. LOVE IT.
Have a 2-year-old brother nick-named Bwa who I also love to pieces. Though he always just asks if I can play cards so he can watch (over, and over again), he giggles at me and loves to eat, so his chubbiness and hand-holding brings me happiness daily. My female cousin Ia also loves me, singing, and dancing, so her crazy bubbly self keeps me motivated. She’s 14 I think.
Why has it been SO LONG?! Got to go to the American club before coming back to the training site for Thanksgiving. American club is basically a pool, flushing toilets (a little bit of a surprise coming here was that I would be doing some extracurricular fluids aiming in order to do bathroom calls, just a tad closer to the ground that I’m used to, if ya know what I mean, but you get used to it), the possibility of Mexican-like food (got quesadillas!), beer, and sports courts with some wifi on the side. The answer, invisible person, to your question is, these last three weeks is the longest I will go without being able to access internet for an extensive amount of time. The first three weeks of training, they intentionally cut us off from everything so that we’re fully immersed in the culture and language. So, I come back here in eight days, then get my site assignment (AHHHHHHH, wanna go to the cooler and southern region Sikasso, full of vegetables and fruits, good and beautiful and aplenty), am away for 5 days for my site visit, come back, then home stay again for one last week, then back here. See?! Never again for this long am I separated from internet! Which means, more updates on what I experience and more hearing back from YOU GUYS, and time to write letters during site!
Coming back to aiming in bathroom situations, one thing people don’t use here is toilet paper. This might be surprising to here, but I must share. People here practice anal washing, meaning, they carry water in a type of plastic kettle-looking container called a “Selidaga” to the bathroom with them and use this to clean themselves after using the bathroom instead of toilet paper. At first, THIS SHOCKED ME. Then, I forgot to bring toilet paper from the training site to me at home stay. And, LET ME TELL YOU:
1. Better for the environment! WAY LESS WASTEFUL THAN TOILET PAPER.
2. SO MUCH CLEANER! So, you wipe your behind after delightful things like pooping with your left hand, which is why, culturally, you don’t ever greet people with your left hand or eat with your left hand, as you eat with your hands and not utensils here. (FYI, if you’ve never eaten pasta with your hands, you’ve never been truly happy. Go home and try it TODAY, and change your life for the better!). But, the water cleans far more than TP does. Didn’t believe it until I tried it, but you give your hands a good washing afterwards, and it’s true! I love it, really!
3. I’m just gonna come out and say it, don’t care who knows it: Extra loving to your butt. In our culture, no loving goes to the butt. With this practice, it does. And, FYI, if I ever reference the Selidaga again, as I commonly now say “Selidaga ‘till the DAY I DIE,” you’ll know what I’m a’ sayin’.
Just soak it in, let it marinate. You know, Dae sot.
WHICH REMINDS ME, I have a lot of birthdays I want to do shout outs for, but preliminarily, HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY MELISSA AND ALEX! I love you guys loads and hope it was an amazing day for the two of you. Thought of you really fondly here and hope you’re doing really well ☺.
Last notes, I guess, are that I’ve been running at least 3 days a week, and have gotten up to 30 minutes at a time! Was a goal of mine ☺. Finally got a rhythm going. And, on book number 2 here. Can’t really wait to be able to cook for myself at site, and cut the amount of carbs I eat here in half, because I MISS FIBER AND FRUIT! But, my family is lovely, and I really, like I said, can’t complain. I’m really blessed to be here, and have some amazing friends here already who support me and check on me and want me to smile as much as possible. It’s really good. Which is ALSO funny, but good, “a kani,” is pronounced “akayeen” here, and everyone’s like, YO NAME IS SO GOOD, to which I always respond, WELL YES, BUT NOT IN THE SAME GOOD WAY, BUT YES! Poop stories are abundant, for everything from having to poop in a bag because someone’s using the bathroom, to having diarrhea that probes your soul violently. My village has gotten really close, since we’re far away from other trainees and don’t see them unless we’re at a training together. It’s good. We discuss hard times, poop times, and hard pooping times. You really might not get it unless you were here. I love it dearly. MONTOUGS FO LIFE! I also feel that because we’re a little more isolated than all the other trainees this early on, it might help us adjust easier to site. But this is just a feeling. We all have Malian counterparts at our sites that are kind of our partners in crime in all the work we do, so I’ll never be alone. It’s just that, I’ll be alone when it comes to English. Peace Corps people become pretty close when we’re the only ones we don’t have to pay large amounts of money to talk to in English, on the phone or via them coming here or us going to visit them. You get close.
So, I hear your birthday’s coming up, girrrrrrrl! WHY YES, IT IS! As is Hanukah, December 20-28 (and there are 5 other Jewish volunteers in Mali, só we’re gonna be celebrating Jewish Christmas at a volunteer house in Bamako with Chinese food and a movie on the 25th, YAY). And I have the following schematic to help you help me have an amazing one ☺. In terms of sending ANYTHING, though, send it to the address in the second-to-last blog post no later than December 1. I’ll be moving to site soon and mail takes awhile to arrive in any form, so sending it any later might mean I don’t get it Until early April!
I don’t have a lot of money, but I want to do something special for you because I love you and care about you.
Great!! Do any one of the following things:
-Write me a letter telling me a funny story or a story that reminded you of me or something to that affect, so I can look back on it fondly from time to time and get mail from someone I love.
-Send me a drawing/painting with that letter só I can stick it up in my hut at site when I get there! Small and wonderful way to see a piece of you every day in my life in Mali.
-Send me pictures of us in that letter. Slash, ridiculous magazine cutouts/collages. You catch my drift. Things I can put up that show me some parts of the magnificent, bizarre, and beautiful you that sent them to me ☺.
I might not have loooooads of money, but I would love to send you a care package!
YES. The following are things I would love for you to send regardless of whatever you wanted to send to me, because I need them constantly and love them greatly:
-TISSUES
-Any of the following foods: Lara/Clif bars; Trekmix (at Trader Joe’s, has cashews and cranberries and cherries and is DELICIOUS); Dried mango (the juicy kind)/papaya/pineapple; and chocolate in plastic baggies só that in case it melts, I can still consumes it gleefully (tip: love the chocolate slash mint combo, like Junior mints ☺).
-Ginger or mint tea bags
NOW, the following are just gravy and wonderful birthday gifts I currently need:
-brightly coloured leggings (I’m a size large/10-12, and these would be helpful, as they allow me to wear shorter clothing as long as my knees are covered by them)
-funky/groovy/bright shirts that cover my shoulders (tank tops are a no, and I’m a size large)
-long skirts that have style (size large/10)
-Maple butter (BIG COMFORT FOOD in the US that they will NEVER HAVE HERE, if you can find it)
-Body wash that smells delicious (easier to use than bars of soap, which get sticky and melt here quite quickly; send in a plastic bag in case it opens while being sent here)
-LUSH PRODUCTS (TEA TREE WATER TONER is a product they have that keeps my face happy and wonderful, and if you can snag some Mask of Magnamity facial stuff, it has mint in it which keeps me cool and calms my face down in this crazy heat, a large blessing. Just send Lush stuff in a plastic bag or two so it doesn’t spill while being sent)
-Air freshener (like pauperrie, for my outdoors bathroom that I will want to make smell like roses. It’s my inner Martha Stewart. If you’d like to, please humour me)

THANK YOU FOR THINKING OF ME IF YOU SEND ME EVEN A PIECE OF NOTEBOOK PAPER SAYING YOU LOVE ME IN BIG CAPITOL LETTERS. It means the world to me and thank you for sending any and all love my way, including any e-mails and FB messages many of you have sent already. I’ll keep letting you know when I can skype.
Main point: yes, I’m happy here. It’s hard, I won’t lie about that. It’s very different in many ways I could not have guessed it would be before being here so I couldn’t ‘prepare’ for it, you feel like you have very little control over your day-to-day since your home stay family (thankfully but sometimes you resent it, quite naturally) does EVERYTHING for you, and you can’t express yourself. I’m overwhelmed about getting to site and not doing anything really for some months because I don’t know enough language and haven’t even settled in. Impending feelings of uselessness make me a little nervous. So I do question and requestion my commitment quite often. But right now, I’m happy to be here and to have the opportunity to think about how I want to improve myself and help others at the same time. You have a lot of time here to think, and for me, my relationship to my life and my body, in terms of gratitude, was lacking in ways I couldn’t have imagined before. It’s good, though albeit hard, to be able to focus on all of that now.
CAN’T WAIT TO TALK TO SO MANY OF YOU! Getting back to e-mails over the next 3 days, please give me some time to respond, as too many of you have shown me love and responding to each thoughtfully takes me a little bit, and know that you’ll never have to wait this long to hear from me again afterwards ☺. Also, READY TO WRITE YOU ALL LETTERS! Send me one, and I’ll send you one back, PROMISE. Already bought the stamps and ish ☺. PHOTOS NEXT POST, I PROMISE!

Love,
Later populace

So, it's kind of a shitty story...

HERE IN MALI! Got in on Sunday afternoon, exhausted after discussing my expectations of my service here in Mali to the max with my group in Philadelphia. Basically, we got into training for 8 hours straight, with everyone on 2 hours of sleep and no foods in our tummies, and then had our last night on the town (i.e., dinner, because we were all so tired), before I had a luxurious Lush-filled bath for the last time in 2 years!

Got to see snow on Saturday for the last time in awhile! It was a really nice, winter-wonder-filled way to go, minus the fact that I was dressed for literally 100 degree weather (every day here in the cold season). But, coming into the airport was a disorienting experience. This next part is gonna sound intense, but I think it's just apart of a personal journey to better recognizing myself within any context, which is an overwhelmingly spiritual and dignifying experience that I feel blessed to have :-).

Basically, being Kenyan in Peace Corps Mali is an interesting combination. Everything I expected to see (i.e., no running water, no electricity, washing your hands before eating, things being a little dustier, things being in a different language a large amount of the time) was not what surprised me. What surprised me coming in to the training site from the airport was the responses of other volunteers. This is not because they were strange, mean, or anything out of the ordinary from what my father remarked upon noticing the first time he arrived in Nairobi to do his post-doctorate: different drainage systems, less infrastructure, womyn with baskets of different things on their heads, soccer games as social focal points, cities that look less extensive than DC, etc. What surprised me, rather, was how this, for me, was something I've never questioned, and that, for many other people here with me right now, it is. It makes me feel a little...dissociated from everyone else. I'm constantly pouring over how I can learn Bambara (the language I'll be speaking at my service site I get to on January 7 if I get through training, fingers crossed :-) ) in order to feel more like I do in Kenya (since one of the main languages there is English, so I can always feel at home). So I can feel more like I'm not here on some sort of cultural ride that gives me the upper hand of expecting some differences already without hesitation along with this sense that Nairobi's more comfortable because people know me there and love me already, regardless of how I present myself in these first, incredibly important introductions I feel I'm about to make with homestay families and continuously with other trainees and volunteers. I feel like other volunteers are adapting to the rest of it that I just don't think of things to "adapt" to. I mean, minus changing up some essential routines (i.e., bathroom activities, washing my underwear, which I SUCK at, paha, etc.), I'm focusing on how to make my identity show through in this new gender role, this new culture. How to cover my knees but still speak loudly and effervescently. How to joke and joke similarly to how I usually do in English. How to carry that sarcasm! It's just strange to know that other people might do this at different times than me. It feels a little isolating. It means that, so far, the few tears I've had have been because I thought I might have eaten meat (I didn't, but that's spiritually a problem for me if it happens), or because I feel as though I might not honour my mother's memory with grace in everything I relay to womyn in the future site I do service in through my health education post. I've been engaging with really wonderful people about their identities. I just want mine to feel like it fits in Bambara, like in Kenya. It feels different, being from "Africa," I guess. I hope that all makes sense.

BUT THIS IS NOT THE REASON FOR THE NAME OF THIS POST!! The REASON, though, for the post name, is that I HAVE ALREADY SHIT MYSELF! (Excuse my language, populace). First full day here, it was probably a combination of crappy Chinese food, loads of coffee, and a lot of hot sauce at my first meal here, but I had a really serious mix of bad diarrhea and dizziness (definitely from the States) when in anything but a lieing-down position, and I SHAT MYSELF. Apparently, it happens to eeeeeeverybody at least once! If yo' laughin', that's 'cause you hidin' somethin' too, is what I learned, paha. In Peace Corps, we talk about poop. All the time. It's a good thing. No, really--it is.

Along with the identity struggles and learning how to WASH MY UNDERWEAR (see where that comes in, now?), the culture here is beautifully different. People are genuinely so much nicer. Greetings are big here, so people constantly acknowledge each other (literally, as opposed to trying not to say hello to someone when you cross their path, which is considered incredibly rude here), and joking is big, especially with people with your same cultural background if you're Malian (we're given Malian names here, so we are basically given an ethnicity that we're allowed to incessently joke with to ease tension and enjoy ourselves). On toooop of all that, I found out, I don't have to take vacation off when people visit me here in Mali!!! Which means, a. PLEASE VISIT IF YOU WANTED TO!! (lookin' at YOU, Sofia, Rai, Christina, and Zarela), and b. COME FOR AS LONG AS YOU EFFING WANT. 2-3 weeks would be FINE. And, this also means, I MIGHT COME HOME AT SOME POINT! For, like, 2 weeks. It depends. I might also just spend more time in Kenya. But now, I've got about 7 weeks (weekends don't count as time taken off here :-) ) of vaca, and I wanna spend 3 weeks of it with fam. We'll see.

No Timbouctou, apparently, because of security advisaries, which SUCKS, but otherwise, I'm beginning to love this. Henna on my hands for the upcoming Tabaske (a religious holiday), and ready to learn some mo' Bambara!

Ate logo, populace, from Mali :-).

Welcome back!! + DISCLAIMER

Welcome back, populace!

I am embarking upon the next big journey in my life, as a "Health Education Extension Agent" in the Peace Corps. I'm going to be in Mali, a country in West Africa (see left). I will be there from October 30, 2011 - January 6, 2014. I get training from October 30, 2011-January 6, 2012 (when I'll hopefully swear in as a Corps Volunteer), and then go to my post, which I will be given halfway through training, until January 6, 2014 (the regular 2 years of service which volunteers must complete).

What? "Health Education Extension Agent"? Great question! The government of Mali has made a goal to totally decentralize their primary health care system by 2015. That means, taking it out everywhere, including places where I might be posted, without electricity or running water. They have Peace Corps volunteers carrying out dissemination of public health messages in order to support this goal. I will be talking about any of the following health issues in Mali through radio broadcast, theatrical skit (as the literacy rate is low, 26-47%, in parts of the country I'll be posted in), and/or/even talking to primary and secondary school students: -pre/postnatal counseling -nutritional counseling for mothers of children under the age of 5
-HIV/STIs (though Mali's HIV prevalence rate, 1.5% (as of 2007), is half that of Washington, DC, 3% (as of 2010))
-family planning
-other infections/common diseases (i.e., think diarrhea and accompanying dehydration, etc.)

DISCLAIMER
In order to keep things peachy on this here blog site, you're gonna have to understand that:
"The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps."

But Akinyi, I love you and will miss you and will never be able to talk to you EVER AGAIN! But, imaginary person, you have proven yourself to be a LIAR! I will in fact be on the internet at least once every 2 weeks. If you...
Need my e-mail address? Ask me for it.
Want my physical address to send me wonderful things, like paintings/drawings/doodles I can hang up like your mother would when you were in kindergarten, vegan non-perishable snacks that I can munch on, pictures of us I can hang up, and other faaaabulous gifties (NOTE: Hanukah this year is December 20-28, and birthday is December 21 :-) )?

Akinyi Shapiro, PCT
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 85
Bamako, Mali

NOTE: Send things (letters and packages)via "airmail," and they should get to me within 3-4 weeks. Figure that it will take 2 months to hear a response from me.

Send me things to your heart's content! I WILL RESPOND. I really have little else to do but focus on you without this apeshit crazy screen-based culture of madness around me for 2 years and 2 months. So, keep 'em coming! E-mails, snail mail, all of it.

Plans after Peace Corps? You're abandoning me for the rest of my life, aren't ya? No, Sarah Palin, I'm not. But I might be traveling around West Africa (i.e., Ghana, Togo, other places) for a month or so afterwards, and then spend another month in Kenya with my family if I can manage to get Peace Corps to let me not come straight home (they book me out as soon as my time is up). Might even visit some friends (i.e., I see you, Miss Suzy Cream Cheese!) in Europe on the way back. That means, might be coming back around late March, 2014. But I'll be back, I pwomise. Thinking of doing law school afterwards, for international law, but that's tentative. After this, things might change in the life game plan!

How much do you work that you can't get on the internet more than once every 2 weeks?!?!??? I'll be working 7 days a week, accruing 2 days leave per month worked, in a place without electricity or internet. I'll be cycling to the nearest internet cafe (most likely over 15 miles away) in order to check my e-mail. I'd check in a little more often if I could.
Any other questions? Shoot 'em my way. Facebook, e-mail, mail, all good choices. Love, and next time, coming to you from my training site in Tubaniso, our training site 15 minutes drive outside of Bamako, Mali (the capitol)!

Spectacularly,
Akinyi