Either you understand at once what it is, or there is no sense in trying to explain it to you, Skip.

(Henna my host Mama did on me, of my Bambara name that family gave me, which has now changed! To Karija Coulibaly)

“I don’t know if this makes any sense at all, but I don’t really think they have a private life.” – A PC Mali volunteer

“I feel like, when I go to stage (regional volunteer) house, I’m incredibly public, but when I’m in village, it’s an incredibly private life. I mean, I speak, but I’m thinking all the time. It’s almost as if I go through my entire life in pictures, in my head, and make sense of it all.” – Another PC Mali Volunteer

“As [a former volunteer in Brazil] put it in his book… ‘Because I spoke nearly no Portuguese and chose to go to those parts of Rio de Janeiro where no tourists go, there were weeks where I began to forgot that I exist.’” – PC’s book “A (Few) Cultural Adjustments” that they send to all volunteers before leaving

“ ‘It took us that long to realize that a purpose of humyn life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.’ “ – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Sirens of Titan, Pg 313

“Salo once described this durable form of government to Rumfoord as hypnotic anarchy, but declined to explain its workings. ‘Either you understand at once what it is,’ he told Rumfoord, ‘or there is no sense in trying to explain it to you, Skip.’” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan, Pg 268-9

There have basically been four things central to the past three weeks or so of my time in Mali. They must begin, though, with what I now realize I have explained to almost nobody at home in anything beside short snippets floating around in my head at any given time. I must begin by explaining why I decided to join the Peace Corps.

I decided to join the Peace Corps in my sophomore year of high school. I decided to do so begrudgingly. In fact, I was incredibly angered by the fact that this would be a future decision of mine. But, if there’s one thing I feel that I’ve learned from my father in my life, as well as trying to live a principled Jewish life to some degree, it’s that you should try to act as much within principles that you believe to be righteous and somewhat just, whenever you have control over it. And a big principle I was raised with, as my once-Anarchist father’s daughter and as a Jew, was that, if the community falls, we all fall. So everything we do is so that the community is a more healthy, growing, and, for whatever it means to its members, a more spiritually enriching grounds for being able to love one’s life and find meaning in this crazy mess of a world while living it. So, I thought that the Peace Corps, in my sophomore year of high school until I left October 28, 2011 for service, angered me as a concept because it smelled at once as much like a well-meaning but incredibly open-to-mistakes foray into trying to help others as it did like an imperialist foray into trying to convince people that Americans were nice. But I knew that the central idea to the Peace Corps, since Kennedy put it into being in 1961, was sustainable development through putting people who could put in the time in places where there were problems and having them make relationships along the way that elucidated both sides as to some part of the equation of progress they’d all been missing.

I.e., I happen to see half of America’s vast structural problems as a result of making a country founded upon the idea of unrestrained opportunity if you have the drive to make something of yourself, but only allowing certain parts of the population the ability to be on the same playing field to have that “drive” and opportunity. In a country like Mali, which is the third poorest country in the world but yet has 719 local sections of its government with health clinics every 15 kilometers from people for them to access when they’re sick at a price that can honestly be afforded by everyone (after collecting money from others in the village, which happens frequently when people are sick and don’t have the money, as do community-driven money collections for impending times of hardship so that womyn can get things like prenatal exams regardless of the first-time fee), I happen to see half of Mali’s structural problems as a result of unchecked colonialism allowing other countries and languages to own all means of industry and, therefore, progress and commerce, while Malians themselves do not have the money to participate in any form of ownership outside of tradition, pitting tradition against commerce and industry to stunt the country’s progress in providing for its people (nothing, I believe, by the way, could feel more disenfranchising than having to choose between my traditions and my future, because the two are never opposites but can be manipulated by my country’s leadership to seem as such when I don’t feel like an active participant in change). I hope that all makes sense.

So, in favour of learning how to make a community work together for progress within itself, while simultaneously and almost more importantly (as a Jew, for me) learning how to do this as an active participant and member of the community (to not be a disenfranchising foreign cog orchestrating change behind the Wizard of Oz curtain of a community), I joined the Peace Corps. In order to work in transforming reproductive and sexual rights through constitutional international law in the Afro-diaspora (or at least that’s the plan right now, but who knows, everything could change at any given time!), I chose to apply for service with the geographic preference of “Sub Saharan Africa” (a region is all you can suggest, though Peace Corps does not have to give you a country in the regions you ask for), with the hope of learning how to work with others to help others as one of the others and not an impending, separate, better-off-for-knowing-more-and-having-been-trained-in-law-and-elite-schools-to-guide-change force.

It’s also important to say why I joined because a lot of people think—very kindly, might I add—that it was a large sacrifice on my part to join the Peace Corps! But that idea requires the proof of things I consciously gave up to be here. Which leads me into what’s been happening recently.

On not being in the army, and why the army is a place I could never go

So, I’ve read four books since I’ve come to Mali. Two were on the Peace Corps, one was “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel—an amazing graphic novel tht she dubs a “family tragicomic” about her coming out as a lesbian in rural Pennsylvania but also simultaneously about her father’s suicide and a life of compulsions—and the last was a Vonnegut, the only Vonnegut I brought with me, which was a dumb decision because Vonnegut makes my life meaningful: The Sirens of Titan. Now, people usually knock on The Sirens of Titan because it’s not as good as Cat’s Cradle, or Slaughterhouse 5, or the Children’s Crusade, a story about Billy Pilgrim/Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. himself, a POW in Dresden, Germany during the big bombing during WWII, who has become unstuck in time and travels through space. But, all the same, The Sirens of Titan is a very good book.

The Sirens of Titan is about (SPOILER ALERT) a very stylish man whose life—orchestrated by the needs of the machine people of the planet of Tralfamadore, 150,000 light-years away from Earth—is dedicated to the gleaming showmanship of driving his personal spaceship into a pocket of space where time and all of its wonders meet in the solar system, becoming split between different parts of space and materializing and dematerializing as time should have it because of driving into this universe time pocket, recruiting an army for Mars and purposefully leading them on a suicide mission of epic proportions in a war against Earth, using this horrific suicide mission to unify Earth and dispose of borders by creating a Church of G-d the Utterly Indifferent, and ultimately, helping the people of Tralfamadore spread a simple message to the other side of the Universe. Because that’s all that Earth was supposed to do, since the Tralfamadorians needed a message sent across the universe and could use us to do it.

The Sirens of Titan talks a lot about war. That’s because Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a POW in Dresden, Germany, during WWII, and spent a lot of time thinking about what war means. And in The Sirens of Titan, he likens it, in a recruited group of people for the doomed army of Mars, to being an instrument for greater ends on the parts of leaders without respect for the lives of the soldiers. I’m not really sure how that’d make soldiers feel to read. But I do know, not ever having wanted to go into an army before, that reading the book freaks me out. Because in order to recruit for the army, they erase most peoples’ minds and make them do things that they are never sure they did, like kill each other for indisgressions, completing direct commands without thinking (they have radio antennas put in their skulls so that they get painful shocks when they don’t do what they’re told and have a drum beat to every march they make transmitted semi-telepathically that drowns out all their other thoughts), and painfully forget questions they shouldn’t ask. It makes them machines for this very stylish man who wants them all to go on a suicide mission against every city in Earth so that Earth can eventually not have any borders, which would seem as though there’d be no more wars.

I have never joined an army first and foremost because I’m afraid to lose my individualism for a cause orchestrated by someone else. That would scare me partially because I don’t ever want to plausibly have to kill somebody to protect the interests that somebody has told me exist, because I don’t think that there’s ever a big enough reason to kill somebody. Punish or banish, yes, but kill, no. I also think that it’s incredibly valiant to join a group of people for a cause bigger than yourself, but don’t think I succumb well enough to thinking as a group because I’m selfish and really like playing devil’s advocate and not having to agree with others in the favour of being a strong group. In fact, one of the big reasons I already said that I chose to join the Peace Corps was to get better at acting as a part of a dedicated group to change. So, I’m not willing to sacrifice a lot of things, let alone my actions and possibly my mind, for the trusted interests of a group of leaders to a cause that they’ve chosen. I didn’t sacrifice my nice house—houses are nice around the world—or my bathroom—my calf muscles are pretty good now from squatting and I ain’t need no Jillian Michaels fo’ dem workouts—or my life—it’s been pretty transformative here—to be here. I know other volunteers left their jobs, their children, their houses, and other things to be here—that’s a pretty big sacrifice. But I didn’t. I can still talk to whoever I want while I’m here, granted it may mean that I need to buy some phone credit or get my butt over to the regional house in order to skype them. I will soon have my own house, which I didn’t in the States. And, for free. I have a support team in Peace Corps that’s literally dedicated to me being happy and effective, and a village that threw a dance party for me and makes me food for every single meal of the day—and is giving me a puppy—and loves me and is excited about me working with them for as long as I’ll stay.

I’m not giving anything up, and no one’s making me go to war. I’m not sacrificing anything. I’m here because I want to learn and do it while trying to help other people, and the US is awesome in making a program that’ll provide enough for me to live while I do it.

Timafeyo and A Language to Yourself

So, we all went to our sites on Monday morning two weeks ago, and came back to regional capitols absolute latest by Caturday morning, for a romp-roaring good time with volunteers in our regions to welcome us to service (nice, right?!!??). On Monday, we traveled to our sites with our homeologues, and mine proved to be incredibly cool, as I’d thought he would be. His name is Jakaliah Kone, and he’s been a Relais (local health clinic volunteer unpaid and chosen by the community leaders to basically bring the health messages straight to peoples’ doors through demonstrations, vaccination drives, and baby weighings) since 1994, and began getting certified by/working with Peace Corps in 1996. He loves his work because, “When [he] started working in Ziangolodougou, there were far fewer people. But since [he] started, and people started understanding nutrition, and coming to prenatal check-ups, and coming to vaccination drives and [country-wide] health campaigns [that he helps the government get to the local level as a Relais], there are so many people, and that’s good.” He’s a Relais because he wanted people to stop dieing. And he really wants to work with me on health campaigns, vaccination drives, and health demonstrations (animations put on for community members to show why different healthy activities are important, i.e. washing your hands, feeding your baby protein after 6 months of age, etc.) to make more people live.

So THAT’S pretty fantastic.

He also likes my sense of humour, which is important for my incredibly large ego J.

On Tuesday, I met 4 other volunteers near me, including my site mate, who’s another health volunteer 5 km away in the next village over and quite loveable. Though she’s been here for a year and a half and will probably be leaving soon, she can be a kind of adjustment/work partner in crime until she does, and she also gets my sense of humour, which, again, is incredibly important. Also knows her way around Providence and has a puppy! So we bond, and we shall bond.

The rest of my time was spent speaking virtually no English. I met one guy who was a little creepy, though harmless, and who’s around my age and teaches French at a local school, and he kinda spoke English. Otherwise, nope. No English. None. Basically, watched a Country Grammar video on his phone, and then no more English.

Now, like the quote about the guy in Rio de Janeiro above, not speaking a language very well and not being around other people who aren’t from the isolated area you’re in where you don’t speak the language like your own makes you feel a little like you don’t exist. That sounds intense—as it feels!—so it’s not completely as if you don’t exist. You just don’t feel like you can affirm whom you are to other people, kind of like how I said in my last post on the power of language in speaking yourself. You kind of rely on language as a mode to communicate yourself, and suddenly, the first couple of months at site, you learn a different way to do that, really really well. And, in the process, you begin to feel, as I’ve gathered from other volunteers, as if you might have acquired two identities, completely distinct from one another.

One, the public self who exists as a volunteer in village.

The other, the private self who exists as an observer of everything, constantly absorbing, constantly reflecting, constantly drawing conclusions you never really had the time to do when you were constantly, well, talking about everything in the language you would otherwise require to process and reflect on it all with, all in your head.

Either you kinda get it all at once, or there’s no use trying to explain it. I just was overwhelmed to find that I am one of those people who frequently lives a completely public life. That means, I think aloud, so it’s hard to censor. Which means, to be appropriate, I try to think according to what I think is fair. Which means, I censor my own commentary on what happens around me most the time. But suddenly, I have been thrust into a job where I am almost forced into a private self.

It’s a tad strange.

After a few days, speaking in English felt really strange, because it began to feel like I was speaking my inner monologue to others. When English is the language you use to think in only, it begins to feel very private. I became almost possessive of it. When people tried to practice English on me, I could feel myself getting more and more irritated. It finally felt like I’d created a constant, through all of this crazy training experience where very little is under your control. I finally created this literal language of solace. And I couldn’t share it with anyone in village because nobody could speak it.

Village was intense on top of this because keeping to one’s self is seen as negative. Why, you might ask? One volunteer asked someone in their village and got the response that, “When you’re alone, you think too much. And when you think too much, you get sad.”

So, people would rather be in complete silence here with each other than on their own. This means that I was thinking all these amazing things to myself, but people both thought I was alone because I was sad, and I had no way of translating exactly what these amazing things were yet into good enough Bambara (or SENUFOKAN mjbfkjdbfkjsbkjd) to tell them about what I’d been thinking so they wouldn’t think I was antisocial anyway.

One thing I thought of, ironically, was how, if Bambara was so easy for me so far, I could have learned Ja Luo, my tribal language in Kenya, in the past. I hadn’t meditated on this at all before site visit really, but my great grandfather Timafeyo, before he died second semester of my junior year in college, had said that he wanted me to spend a summer with him, learn Luo, and see how they live. He died at the happy age of 104, and yet I still didn’t ever take him up on learning who we were, and who he was, through my mother tongue that I really should—and now, with Bambara, know I could—learn. At the age of 103, he could still speak some English phrases. But it just came to me all at once that, we frequently don’t things because we feel we don’t have time for it. Especially when those things are things we need to be happy or feel we’re leading fulfilling lives. And I cried, because I’d done that, preventing my great grandfather from ever hearing me speak our language, by not spending the time like I am now and learning who we are together over a summer.

Which leads me to, why I self-sabotage, and the ways of Hypnotic Anarchy.

I realized all of a sudden, along with how I could have spoken to my great grandfather had I have learned Luo, that I’d done that with several other things that would have made me happy. I’d done it with music—I’d deprived myself of singing, dancing, and playing any instrument whatsoever for years, because I “didn’t have the time.” I’d done it with health—I’d come to hate all forms of exercise, eaten mindlessly and guiltily, and slept far too little to be happy and just enough to be sick too frequently, because I “didn’t have the time.” In fact, I’d done it with preparing myself for things I’m worried about by allowing myself to become paralyzingly overwhelmed, cleaning where I lived by letting my life become as cluttered as my thoughts when I was stressed, and meditating to think clearer by watching TV consistently over having any form of silence to myself, especially when I had time alone.

Oprah once coined this term called “Self Sabotage.” The idea is that people frequently aren’t happy, as I’ve basically described here, because they’re sabotaging themselves against being happy purposefully. I think I’ve found since site visit and the end of homestay that I “don’t have enough time” for things that make me happy because I get so worked up about doing things perfectly that I figure I might as well not even start them. In a nutshell, I’m a perfectionist, but I don’t think that term even does it justice—I’m frightened by the possibility of letting myself down. Frightened of not taking full advantage of my turns at making the most of my life.

Now, while I was figuring all of that intense shit out, I was also coming to realize that, while I had all this time to think about and reflect upon myself, to live in a village like mine in rural Mali is to live only publicly. And that’s a little like the planet of Tralfamadore, where Salo, an alien machine, says that they operate by “hypnotic anarchy,” and that you either get what that means, or you don’t. In Mali, there are loads of cultural rules and regulations, and no private spaces in which to commit anything to the contrary of really anything that has proven to work for the community. If you don’t follow the cultural rules, you gotta go. Otherwise, people almost exclusively want to help you be happy at any cost, and will provide for you. Anarchy without being spoken, just thought. Catch my drift?

Example:

-No open displays of emotion beside laughter/happy things (no crying [i.e., even during childbirth and frequently at funerals], no hugging)

-No adultery/sex before marriage

-No showing of the thighs/knees if an adult

And you get…

-Always money to go to a health clinic

-Always greeted

-Always offered food and drink everywhere as a guest

-Always have food, even if struggling to make ends meet

Now, I realized that I can’t really say I don’t have the time to help myself be happy when a village of people who exclusively work to live together are depending on a happy, healthy me to help things work even more. That’s selfish, and no longer self-sabotage: that’s community sabotage. Which is the exact opposite of why I’m here. This is a lot, I know, paha. But my village is incredibly self-sufficient, it seems, thusfar. Which is great, since I’ll be working with them. It’s just a little intimidating when I feel like I’m joining this socialist collective dedicated to caring about each others’ health and wellbeing as a health volunteer who’s just figuring a lot of her own shit out. So I realized I need to work on myself privately to be a better public person. Which is a little contradictory-feeling to me right now, since I’m not, like I said, much of an alone type of person. But that brings us to the public work, in direct relationships, or how home-stay started to drive me insane.

I found that I needed to work out my self-sabotage as well as connect with people, as opposed to living inside my English-speaking zone thoughts, in order to be less overwhelmed, feel welcomed, wanted, and less watched from afar as a foreign language speaker, foreign culture, and general foreigner, and to feel like I was apart of my community and in turn propel me into working better with it and not being paralyzingly overwhelmed by it. But I returned to a homestay experience where, while my host-mom and I, and several other people in my family, love each other, everyone in village began to seem…unpleasant.

The best way to describe this is not as anyone’s fault, but as a result of a bunch of factors.

1. There were 8 of us in one village of 2000-ish people

2. We all came in not speaking more than 20 words in Bambara

3. We all came in not knowing the culture

4. We looked dazed and confused a lot (because it’s dazing and confusing to live somewhere else with a family that’s not yours all of a sudden)

All of these things made us become akin to the local zoo exhibit for people in Montougula. Which makes perfect sense, but, I don’t like being looked at like a zoo animal. A, because I’m a person, not a zoo animal. B, because I can speak a language, know how to cook and live for myself, and can do many things competently enough that I became a Peace Corps Volunteer to help others do things even better. When people yell my name without wanting to greet me (because they’re excited to see me, I’m sure) and only to laugh in my face when I respond after I’ve lived there for over a month (because I know it is crazy to here me respond in Bambara, but that doesn’t make me feel nice), it makes me feel sad, watched, unincluded, and like I can’t connect with anyone because I’m more of an attraction than a person to them to connect to.

How do I take care of myself when I feel like no one’s seeing me for myself?! AHHHH, and it was ALL in my HEAD! In my private self while the communities here on a small village level are completely public, and in Bambara. Homestay started to drive me insane. And if it hadn’t have been for my homestay family and the safe haven they gave me from what was beginning to feel, though it wasn’t intended to be at all, like harassment, I might have started to paint my walls with egg shells to represent my cracked mind.

All of this is to say, we came back from site visit, and I found out they were making me a new house from scratch where the volunteer 10 years ago had lived, which I get to help design (?!?!!!!!!!!). And that means, I get windows galore and a kitchen. Though people speak primarily Senufokan, the language of the Senufo (as opposed to Bambara) ethnic group, all people except young kids and older womyn speak Bambara (sad, but I’ll try to learn Senufokan dooni dooni [‘little by little’ in Bambara] to connect with them too). My village is a farming village that grows everything Mali’s known for growing. I mean:

-4 different types of mangos

-papaya (they gave me 3 the size of my torso)

-bananas

-pineapple

-rice

-corn

-millet

-sweet potato

-corn

-hot pepper

-ginger

-sour root

-spinach

-lettuce

-tomatoes

-peanuts

And they’re excited for me to start my garden!! Which means they’ll help. WHICH means I’m getting humongous sunflower seeds for my house J. And soy plants, as planned. The only two things they don’t plant, sadly, are garlic and onions. Gonna have to go get those at the market/border town once a week. Also, though, because my market town is a border town (Zegoua), I CAN DO HIV WORK BECAUSE THEY HAVE A HIGHER PREVALENCE RATE AT BORDERS OF COUNTRIES THAN INSIDE THEM. This is HUMONGOUS, because though it’d be nice to not have to do HIV work if it wasn’t a problem, I was originally going to do a specifically HIV/AIDS-oriented Peace Corps program before funding got cut for a bunch of programs, and have always wanted to and will always want to do HIV work. So, YAY. The CSCOM in Zegoua would like the help, and I’ll be overly glad to give it to them. Also, can do a radio show in Zegoua. YAY.

Requested my puppy…three times…homeologue said it’d happen.

Cute pictures and intense farming pictures ensue. But basically, good people, just a small village with not much to talk about in a place where culturally they don’t want you to not talk with them. Conundrum in any small town I’d go to in the world, so I guess I just need cue cards. Or something. I mean, honestly, when I won’t be working, I might need a puppy just to start a conversation. We can talk about what trucks are going where on the main road my village is on from dawn till dusk, but that don’t make us excited.

Homestay ended on the 31^st. My mom did traditional Bambara henna on my right hand and feet the night and morning before I left. I gave her three kangas and a bracelet from Kenya, and she walked me to where the van picked us all up and cried (remember, not socially acceptable)…for half an hour. She hugged me three times. My 10-year-old brother who always wanted to love me cried. Every boy in my concession bar one teared up, as did my loud but loveable Aunt. They were and always will be my lovely homestay family. I’ll bring them, like I did from site visit, food from Sikasso, pictures, and loving, whenever I come back to Bamako and have a way to go into village. They were just lovely, gave me loads of salad, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better fit nor for a better time.

The 31^st was a shitshow dance party, Peace Corps style. Care package food was indulged in. The next day, Wet Hot American Summer was watched. If you haven’t seen it, it’s ridiculously funny and about a Jewish summer camp in Maine. Everyone in SNL is in it. It made me realize that, on the lighter side of reflections, I really should’ve been a Jewish camp counselor.

Swear in is this Friday the 6^th, at 10am, and I’ve been asked to give a speech in front of everyone about our stay here and what we plan to do with our time in Mali…in Bambara! I was told on my birthday, which, bar explosive diarrhea, was a fantastic day! I got a beautiful package from an amazing friend with a fantastic stuffed animals in it along with some amazing chocolate, painted my nails, had a private dance party, and then ate delicious food in our special shady grove in village with all the trainees and experienced good Tegan and Sara. Mama made me good food for the whole day.

Anyways, doing the speech! It’s a big deal, because everyone will understand it…hopefully, and it’s basically all about how home is kind of like a language, and, as we’ve moved into our homestays, learning Bambara, and learning what we’ll be doing at site as well as this rich culture, we’ve been expanding our vocabularies of home in a way to expand the dialogue on sustainable development and speak together about new ways and words to move forward in partnership as Peace Corps and Mali.

You can ask me for the English translation if you want it J. Excited. Need to keep on practicing, and happy I was speech captain to oddly enough prepare me for this, paha.

Moving into site on the 10^th. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Last time moving in AWHILE, hopefully. ALMOST MADE IT, YAY. LONGEST UPDATE EVER. NOW PICTURES.

…And, let’s say we wanted to send you some letter or package or something, because we thought you were going insane and wanted you to keep in touch with reality a little more than Vonnegut novels?

Fair question! My NEW ADDRESS is as follows, which all things should be directed to from now on:

CORPS DE LA PAIX

Capt. Akinyi Shapiro

B.P. 227

SIKASSO, MALI

Send me ANYTHING! Surprises are honestly the best, and if they’re edible, my only request is that they be vegan and delicious.

Some ideas for letters are:

-amazing or hilarious pictures

-letters about what you’re thinking, what’s happened, or a story you think I need to know

-magazine articles I should read, from the internets or from your classily delivered hometown paper

-drawings/water colour/pastel stuff I can put up on my house walls here!

Some ideas for packages are:

-Green curry paste

-TUMS (I’m addicted to them, and constantly need them here as well)

-orzo

-quinoa

-dark chocolate with sea salt/mint (plastic-baggied in case it melts)

-dried pineapple/berries

-trail mix

-creamed honey

-seaweed chips

-cinnamon/mint gum

-Halls…of any kind (I’m ADDICTED and MISS THEM TERRIBLY)

-water mixes (i.e., crystal light/anything else that makes gallons of water every day still taste meaningful)

-vegan delicious things (and just an FYI, you can send baked goods you make!! People get them all the time in packages, and as long as they’re well sealed in Tupperware, or even PLASTIC DOUBLE-LOCK BAGGIES, they get here and honestly taste as good as the next day…which should freak us all out a little bit, but means that, if you’re willing to bake it, I WILL UNBEGRUDGINGLY EAT ALL OF IT. Baking will be a little tough for me here the first couple months before I can make a solar mud oven—I know, right?!—so I will eat absolutely ANYTHING YOU SEND)

-Tupperware

-PENS/COLOURED PENCILS/MARKERS, OH MY

-things that make homes homey

-things that make puppies happy

-sriracha

-smell-good bath stuff

-GOOD TEA (my favourites are ginger, mint, and deliciously fruity)

-GOOD COFFEE (instant)

-leggings/shirts (size large) in bright colours

-pretty pictures for my walls

-JEWISH HOLIDAY DECORATIONS

-a book you think I should read (VONNEGUTS are THOROUGHLY APPRECIATED)

and…SURPRISES! My favourite thing I’ve gotten so far is a surprise stuffed animal. We literally all talk about him (his name’s Michael, and he’s a rainbow tie-dyed sock chicken) and snuggle with him, and he keeps my stuffed animal friend Walrus company. which is incredibly important, you should know, because Walrus is an incredibly stately fellow with an incredible amount of things to do and not enough courage to ask for a friend every once in awhile to keep him company. But now, he has some. We’ve all been lucky to find Michael the rainbow-tie-dyed-sock chicken.

Love, and pictures shall continue. Happy I made it this well this far. J Happy holidays, everybody! And, if you HAVEN’T gotten a birthday shout-out, as soon as I have access to my birthday list again, you WILL, I promise. And thanks for all the birthday love J. It meant the world to me, really. It made my week magic.

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