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 :-).