Update: Language In-Service Training

We just finished a week here in the PC  Transit House doing intensive language training where we were able to get a lot of questions answered about all the words villagers have been saying to us for a month and we didn’t understand. So we are excited to get back to Kongodugu (our village) and impress everyone with how intelligent we’ve become in just 1 week :)  We will be back at the Transit house the first week of November, so until then, here’s a quick video to keep you entertained until we return ;) This is a balophone (wooden xylophone) party in our village that we attended during the celebration of the end of Ramadan. Enjoy!

~Joye (and Jim)

Pictures: First Month At Site

Our first month at site has been full of many surprises, adventures, and tedious chores, but unfortunately, we were not able to photograph them all. So, here are a few snapshots of first month at site and the promise of many more to come.

 

First, here we are standing with the packed Peace Corps vehicle that took us to site. Fun fact: that black box coming off the hood of the car is its snorkel, so it can drive through rivers.

 

Site has its difficulties, including the foot-long millipede that crawled by our house the other day that we lovingly named Godzilla-pede.

 

Two everyday tasks are cooking and bike riding. Here, Joye (with her monthly access to an oven) makes our favorite: pineapple pizza. Later, we rode 30 miles round-trip from our site to buy supplies on a bike that looks like a unicorn (it’s the stick of a purchased shovel).

 

Joye at her school’s 20th anniversary bash. First, watching the party (lower left corner), and then, her facing her worst fear (second to Godzilla-pede) and giving a speech (in Bambara).

 

 

At our home, Jim breaks all cultural norms by showing his knees and washing clothes simultaneously. But he made up for it by dancing later (cool xylophones behind him).

    

 

And site has its splendid moments, including this view of the sunrise from our yard.

 

Thanks for looking on! Please feel free to comment below!

-James & Joye

Guest: Article from US Embassy

Hello readers,

The web address belongs to an online article by the U.S. Embassy in Bamako regarding our Swearing-In ceremony last month. Just copy and paste it in the address bar to get sent to the site. You can check out to read a brief overview of our class of Peace Corps trainees as well as play Where's Waldo to find us in the picture. Enjoy!

http://mali.usembassy.gov/pcv_swearing_in_2010.html

-Jim

Culture: Greeting

As the first post in a new category that we’re calling “culture,” we thought it would be appropriate to reflect upon an activity that has taken up a great deal of our time since we have arrived: Greeting. However, whereas in America this word corresponds only to a few words quickly passed over at the beginning of a conversation, in Mali, this is an activity in and of itself.

To give you a better idea, the following is a “Greeting” conversation that Jim and I have with every Malian we see every day,

Jim: Good Morning

Villager: Good Morning

Jim: How are you?

V: No problems

Jim: How is your family?

V: No problems

Jim: How is your wife?

V: No problems

Jim: How are your children?

V: No problems

Jim: Everyone is doing well?

V: All Peace

Jim: How did you sleep?

V: Peacefully, How are you?

Jim: No problems

V: How is your wife?

Jim: No problems

V: How are your children?

Jim: We don’t have children yet

V: No, you’re supposed to say “No problems”  It doesn’t matter that you don’t have children. You obviously need to work on your Bambara some more.

Jim: Sorry. (It’s just that this whole thing seems redundant.)

V: How did you sleep?

Jim: All Peace

….. Repeat that conversation again word for word with Joye and after all that you can finally start in on real conversation.

General Rules for Greeting:

• Upon arriving at your workplace or any other location, you must greet everyone in the room no matter how important he/she is or you appear very rude. The only time greeting doesn’t take place is when 2 people are fighting.
• People are greeted in order of importance: this usually means men before women and older Malians before younger Malians.
• It doesn't matter if you aren't married or don't have kids. You have to answer that everyone is fine. Even if people are extremely sick, their family will answer that they are fine. On multiple occasions, we have gone through the regular greetings with families assuring us that everyone is fine before finding out that they spent the day before at the local hospital getting treatment. Obviously, this can be very confusing, so we’ve had to figure out more direct ways to ask about family members so that people will answer truthfully.
• Malians will stop by neighbors and friends houses regularly just to “greet” before continuing on their way. To not do so on occasion is to say that you are not friends.
• As is in the States, it is common to shake hands when greeting in Mali. However, here you may shake hands multiple times, and you can show additional respect by touching your left hand to your forearm or placing your right hand over your heart after shaking.
• White people have a bad reputation for coming to people only when they need things out of them. “Tubabs” as we are called, never come by simply just to “greet” because we are too busy for that sort of thing. Therefore, when Jim and I go out “greeting” at the Mayors Office and local NGO offices, Malians are first very confused and then pleasantly surprised.

At first, when we could barely speak a word of Bambara, this was extremely overwhelming; however, at this point, it has become a reflex. Indeed there have been many days in village where we have spent the whole morning walking through town ‘greeting.’  This odd custom has served as a way to introduce ourselves to villagers and begin to strike up conversations that will hopefully lead to friendships later.  So while we can’t do major projects for our first three months at site, by proactively getting out of our house, greeting, chatting, and drinking tea (another culture blog for another day), we are laying the groundwork for a successful two years at site.

 

~Joye

Update: One Month at Site

Greetings blog readers! Sorry it as been a while, but Internet is hard to come by in our part of the world. However, we are proud to say that we have survived the month of September at our site! Currently, we are attending a week-long Peace Corps language seminar, because Peace Corps figures that after one month volunteers may have language or cultural questions that they would like to ask a qualified instructor. This week also gives us our beloved Internet access (from a cyber café), so if you’d like to send us an email or comment, now is the time.

We also believe that we have done well at completing our self-set objective for this month, which was to greet as many of our future work partners as possible. This has consisted of greeting a large portion of the village where we live (hereby known as Kongodugu) as well as the political and organizational leaders of a nearby town (hereby known as Duguba). Moreover, since Duguba is over eight miles away from Kongodugu, this greeting has required a lot of bike riding, especially for Jim, whose Peace Corps assignment is actually in Duguba, not Kongodugu, but his legs are stronger for it! And now that we have greeted many people, not only do we recognize familiar faces on market day, but we also get many visitors at our own house!

This month we have also been to a splendid array of social ceremonies. First, we attended a baptism of our host-family, whose newborn is adorable. Next, we spent the better half of a day playing a Malian card game during a “company picnic” of sorts for a farming cooperative in our village of Kongodugu. A few days later we then celebrated Mali’s fiftieth anniversary with a large formal celebration held in Duguba, which was not unlike our own Independence Day: hot, long speeches, longer parade, bike race, police beating unruly children, traditional dancing in loincloths, and the like (don’t worry parents, it was perfectly safe). Then, just yesterday, we accepted invitation to the twentieth birthday of Kongodugu’s primary school, which led to us each giving a speech and dancing for a crowd of people. Anything for integration!

Now that this month is over, we have begun to establish our goals through the end of 2010. Thus, in October, we hope to begin some short-term projects that will keep us busy at our site while we continue to develop language skills. For Joye, this largely consists of painting a world map mural near the school, and for Jim, this means using his newly purchased tools to start a garden (he has already started his compost pile). Then, in November, once the rains have stopped falling, we hope to make some improvements on our house, including another room for storage and a high wall to create a compound for us. This will keep us busy until December, when we will return to Peace Corps summer camp for additional sector-specific training, but more on that later.

Lastly, this post would like to announce a new category for this blog that we just starting up: Culture. These pieces will focus on a particular aspect of Malian culture and attempt to explain how it is similar and different from American social norms. Since this month has been largely centered on greeting, this will be the first topic for our culture category. Be sure to check it out to gain a better understanding of just how important this work has been for community integration.

Thanks for reading! -Jim