Culture: Milk

“You’ll really learn to appreciate the simple things in life'” were words we heard over and over as we packed our things to move to Mali.  We have certainly learned to appreciate so much during our past 17 months, but one of those ‘simple things’ we’ve particularly come to appreciate is the luxury of cold milk –readily available and disease free. Ah, America.

In Mali on the other hand, any time you want to buy milk, you need to go on a mini-adventure. Milk is sold almost exclusively by the Fula or Fulani people, nomadic cow herders who live with their lives’ possessions on their backs and move along hundreds of miles of grazing paths from Northern to Southern Mali.  They never stay in one place for long since their cows constantly require new sources of food from the dry, dusty land. The fulane are truly an interesting people. With distinct traditional makeup, jewelry, and style of dress, it is easy to identify individuals who below to their ethnic group. However, the big ‘give-away’ is that the women usually have two calabashes balanced on their heads, one of fresh milk, one of soured milk –all for sale.

Therfore, buying milk offers the following challenges:

1. You often must seek out these nomadic milk merchants yourself if you want to purchase milk. Its only in regional capitals that you can find stores that sell milk.

2. Fresh milk (literally straight from the cow) is only available from 8:30-10am in the morning, if 10 am passes and you havn’t boiled it yet, it turns sour. Malians still cook with sour milk (somewhat like yogurt), but we’re not big fans.

3. All milk must be boiled before consuming to kill any tuberculosis that could be living inside.

4. Even after boiling, we have no refrigerator to put the milk in, so it must be consumed warm and within 3 hours of boiling or it will spoil.

5. You can only buy milk 5 months of the year. Since rainy season only supplies cows with ample feed for 4-5 months, they only produce large amounts of milk for 4-5 months. Once cows get a few months into dry season, they start losing weight due to the scarcity of food and often have to be herded for miles before they can even find a watering hole. Therefore, since the cows barely have enough milk for their young, it is practically impossible to find milk from Dec – May.

Since obtaining fresh milk in Mali is such hard work, we often don't bother. Even when we do want it for dinner, we often forget about it until 11am when its no longer available! However, luckily, powdered milk is readily available so we can use that for a lot of recipes.  Anyways, the moral of the story is, when you savor your next glass of cold pasteurized 2% milk, remember how blessed you are to have something so seemingly simple constantly available to you :)

Thanks for reading,

~Joye (and James)

Update: Ramadan at Site

One of the five pillars of the Islamic faith is an annual period of fasting during the month of Ramadan. In fact, the literal translation of Ramadan from Bambara to English is “fasting month.” From sunrise to sunset, adult Muslims will neither eat or drink anything, unless they are pregnant, breastfeeding, or very ill. However, due to discrepancies between the Islamic calendar and the standard 12-month one, the month of Ramadan varies, usually starting a few weeks earlier every year. This year it just so happened to align very closely with the month of August.

In Kongodugu, this was a challenge for many families since August is already a tough month. This was especially true this year because of a persistent drought in June and July, which forced many to re-plant their cotton, corn, sorghum, and millet later in the rainy season. Hence, there was much work to be done farming stunted crops, yet many families were quickly running low on last year’s harvest. Fasting exacerbates the first problem (it’s harder to farm when you are hungry and thirsty), but adapts well with the latter (eating less food). Thus, in our villages, many families appointed a select few to fast, while the rest stayed busy in the fields.

As volunteers, this made for an interesting dynamic. Most of the time we could not find villagers to work with, since they were in the fields, and when we did they were usually fasting and therefore too tired to do anything. So we kept ourselves busy with our garden, radio shows, some short presentations, and laying the groundwork for larger work once the harvest is over. Though there have been moments of torturous boredom as well!

At the end of Ramadan is a three-day period of feasting known here as (literally  translated) “little prayer.” Families stop their farm work in order to rest, drink tea, and eat good food. Market days prior to this holiday are like American shopping malls before Christmas, crammed with people trying to get the best bargain on new clothes, sandals, and toys. We were amazed how our Kongodugu market tripled in size, and were ourselves caught up in the excitement during a visit to a large market some twenty kilometers away.

But for us, the best part of the end of Ramadan was comparing it to our experience last year, when the holiday fell during our first week in Kongodugu. Back then, it was painful; we spent all day greeting people we did not know in a language we did not speak. We felt like intruders eating their nice food and were upset that they separated us for the entire day – James to sit with the men, and Joye to cook with the women.

This year was very different. We spent most the first day with our host family, moving back and forth between the men and the women as we pleased. Moreover, we brought them plenty of fresh vegetables from a distant market to liven up their meal and even shared tea that we bought in Morocco during our vacation last May. Then the next day we walked through the village and greeted at least twenty households and hundreds of people, many of whom were are friends. And while we were tired afterward, it was exhaustion that was accompanied by accomplishment, not defeat, confusion or resentment.

So, though our development efforts have been slow this month, the past few days have been a reminder of how far we have come and how integrated we now are, which in turn gives us hope that our second year in Kongodugu (& Duguba) will be even better than the first.

Thanks for reading and look forward to pictures soon!

-James (& Joye) Allen

Culture: Blessings

When you see the word “culture”, the first things that probably comes to your mind are food, clothing, language,  family structure, etc. However, the longer we live here the more we realize just how important some of the smaller nuances are to integrating as a respected member of  the Malian community. And one of those nuances (which is a greatly overdue blog post) is the culture of Blessings.

What do I mean by Blessings? Well, in Mali, every time you speak to someone almost about anything you end the conversation with a blessing which correlates to the content of your conversation. The blessing goes like this: “May God ________________?” And the blank could literally be anything: bless your family, give you health, make your harvest plentiful, find a solution, help us to get along better. Then the receiver responds with “Amina” or Amen, let it be so. Since the Bambara word for “God” is “Ala",  blessings are said by everyone, no matter the religion. Muslims say them referring to Allah, Christians say them referring to the Christian God, and animists say them….though Im not sure who they are referring to. Still, the idea is that after listening to someone’s problems, you always have something to offer them in return: a blessing.

There are classic blessings for every occasion:

Baptism: May God bless this child. May God give him a long life. May she have a peaceful life. May God keep him/her healthy. May God make sure he’s not a bean-eater.

Funeral: May he be with God soon. May her resting place be cool.

Wedding: May they spend a long time together. May they live together well. May they become as one. May God give them tons and tons of children.

Sickness: May God lesson your pain. May God heal your sickness completely.

Daily: May God give you a peaceful day. May God watch over us through the night. May God bring us the morning.

We’ve really grown to love this idea. Because in the states, how often are you listening to a friend or family member vent about a situation which is simply difficult and unfair, but totally out of your control to help? You may strongly empathize with the person, but its so hard to find words. For example, an acquaintance might say to you “Man, I’ve been sick for a week, my job has gotten stressful, and to top it all off, my car broke down!” “Wow, that's terrible,” you reply “Hope you get better, and it all works out ,” and if you’re religious, “I’ll pray for you.” But the wonderful thing about blessings is that they are prayer on the spot. “May God reduce your workload, restore your health, and get your car in running condition quickly!” “Amen,” they’d reply knowing that you cared and they had been heard. This doesn’t get you out of helping when you can, but no matter what your resources are, you always can give people blessings.

But if you read through the Bible, old and new testament, you’ll find that this practice is not exclusively a Malian tradition. Jews and early Christians practiced the bestowal of verbal blessings. “May God bless you and keep you. May His face shine upon you. May he grant you peace.” Yet, likely due to the secularization of American culture, its no longer in popular use, even among theists. I understand that atheists, agnostics, or simply those of a different religion, would probably not understand or feel comfortable participating.  Still I know that when I return to America, blessings will be one of the first things that I miss in everyday conversation.  Because even if the person on the receiving end of the blessing doesn’t share my beliefs, the bestowal of a blessing now seems so much more meaningful to me than my former “Hope you feel better.” Perhaps we will be able to continue the practice in the states, maybe at least among family or between the two of us. However, we will never forget the wonderful feeling that arises in us when a stooped elderly Malian women stops us in  our village with the most genuine of smiles and decides to pour blessings on us—sometimes for a full two minutes. Its those moments that make you question “how could I ever be frustrated or have an angry thought about this country when there such amazingly sweet people here?”

So in closing, I’ll leave you all with a few blessings. May God give you a peaceful summer. May He give you time to enjoy his beautiful creation. May He bring you good weather, working air-conditioners, and relaxation. May God give you time to enjoy a barbecue, or many barbecues, and to savor an ice cream cone on a hot day. May He bless your workplace, your health, and your family. and since its 4th of July soon, God Bless America!

Amina.

 

~Joye (and James)

Culture: Rain

With nothing falling from the sky from September to April, the red clay earth is parched, dried and cracked. Almost all vegetation has vanished, picked clean by scrawny goats and donkeys looking for nourishment.  It is not the endless sea of Arabian dunes that you see in movies, just barren, flat, dusty, unforgiving terrain with occasional trees offering the only escape from the heat. The temperature in hot season reaches around 110 F each day, though completely dry heat, and falls to 85-90 at night. Wells are beginning to dry up and we experience for the first time that with extreme dryness, our lips, feet, and hands were drying and cracking as well.  With the lack of water, people stopped gardening since January, so now, aside from mangoes, the only fresh produce is brought in from the big cities, meaning it is pretty scarce. And with the supplies from last years disappointing harvest beginning to dwindle, people start looking anxiously toward the skies.

Without rain, the ground is too hard to plow, the emaciated livestock can not hang on, and life here can’t continue. And it’s this desperation which means that people will try everything and anything to make sure the rain comes. The animists sacrifice chickens and beat drums for rain. The mosque is suddenly full of pious worshippers praying 5 times a day for rain. The Christians hold special services and ask for God’s mercy in bringing rain. Both animists and Muslims have even asked the “tubabs” to go to church and pray to bring them rain.

And as the days go by without it, people get increasingly anxious. Everyday, the grueling heat increases. One day, it seems that the temperature could not get more unbearable. Sweat pores down our faces and soaks through our clothes as we sit in the still shade and chat with villagers. “Its hot,” we state matter-of-factly. “That means the rain will come soon,” they reply in a similar tone.  But we look at the cloudless blue sky and roll our eyes. We do our best to work through the afternoon, but its difficult when the stifling heat each night means we haven't been sleeping much.

Then without warning, a warm, humid breeze rises up like a blowdryer and a wide dark cloud appears low on the horizon. Within minutes the wind is howling, battering the houses with a tsunami of dust and sand swept up from the grassless fields. The temperature drops 30 degrees within the next 15 minutes as the black stormcloud gets closer and closer. With blinding waves of sand whipping at their faces, people scramble to bring in their laundry, tie up their animals, and gather their families. Everything must be secured when rain and wind come in this magnitude. It can destroy anything left outside the protection of mudbrick walls. Running inside, people wrench their tin windows closed to keep out the flood of sand and lock themselves inside their still-boiling mud hut.

And then it comes, a howling torrent of cold rain which thunderously pounds on the tin roofs making it impossible to have a conversation with the person next to you without screaming, but immediately cooling down everything it touches. As we check our roof for leaks and then finally sit down, our hearts are still pounding from the frantic pre-rain preparations.  The rain rages, the first time for only a few minutes, but as rainy season progresses, the storms can last for hours.

But soon after that comes an amazing feeling. As cool air seeps in the cracks of our windows, we feel combined relief from the stagnant heat and knowledge that sleep tonight will be restful.  These are sweet, beautiful moments. And the feeling never gets old. As the terrifying storm front passes, it drags behind it a steady stream of rain without the wind. Then, as you stand at the door of your house and watch it flood the clay soil, you can’t help but breath in deep that life-giving smell and smile, knowing that life can continue and flourish in an otherwise uninhabitable place because of this incredible phenomenon.

 

~Joye (and Jim)

Culture: How to Build a Mud Oven

Every volunteer varies in how much food they cook. Some eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a host family, but Joye and I choose to cook breakfast and dinner for ourselves. Not only have we had bad luck with our host families (one abandoned us, and the other passed away), but we also enjoy a diversity in our diet that is only possible when we are in charge. However, when you only have a propane stove and a small selection of seasonal vegetables at your disposal, after a while it can be difficult to come up with new concoctions. Therefore, using some leftover mud bricks that were laying around, we decided to build a new method of cooking at our site. Lo and behold, the mud oven. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Gather the necessary materials – mud bricks, sand, and… actually, that’s it.

Step 2: Put on nasty unflattering clothes and prepare to get dirty for about two weeks.

Step 3: Add water to the ol’ dirt pit out back to make some well-fashioned mud mortar.

Step 4: Build a flat, square base out of bricks about a meter and half across.

Step 5: Make a rectangular wall around the edges of the base, up to about four bricks high.

 

Step 6: Once your wall is dry and solid, fill in the base with sand and gravel, and top with mud.

Step 7: Create a mold for your oven by piling a mound of sand on the base about 1 meter wide.

Step 8: Wrap the mound in paper to help it keep its shape for the remainder of the project.

Step 9: Make more mud, but this time, add half dirt an half sand to the mixture to make it like pseudo-cement.

Step 10: Cover the mold in a layer of your pseudo-cement a couple inches thick by working your way up from the bottom.

Step 11: Let the pseudo-cement dry for a few hours, before cutting a wide door in the oven.

Step 12: A few days later, add another thick layer (a few inches) of pseudo-cement.

Step 13: When the structure is dry, pull out all of the sand from inside through the door.

Step 14: Build a fire inside to heat up your oven. The thick mud walls and sandy base will trap the heat, so that after a few hours, it should be hot enough to pull the fire out and bake.

Step 15: As an extra precaution, pay some people to come put a layer of cement over the whole thing; this will prevent the rains from destroying all of your hard work. :)

Just as building a mud oven is a process, so is learning how to cook with it. To heat it up to sufficiently hot levels, it is necessary to keep a fire going inside the oven for at least three hours! Then, you need to make sure that your dish is covered tightly, or your peanut butter cookies might end up tasting like bitter campfire smoke (sniffle, sniffle).

However, we have had success already. For my birthday, Joye baked a delicious oatmeal apple crisp for dessert. Then, a few days later, we killed, plucked, cleaned, and baked a chicken with artichokes and tomatoes to create a sumptuous dinner, as pictured above. And for the record, yes, that was the first time we’ve killed, plucked, and cleaned a chicken. :)

Moral of the story: Appreciate your gas-powered oven.

- James (& Joye)

Culture: Malian Fashion & Clothing

As a predominantly Muslim country, Malian clothing is often considered very conservative by western standards. However, relative to many other Islamic countries, the mode of dress here is very loud and expressive.  Markets are filled with brightly colored cloth and people take great pride in their clothing and appearance, so much so that if you tell someone you would like to take their picture, they often will ask to change clothes first! 

Ready made outfits are generally not sold and people buy fabric instead to take to their local tailor. So the first challenge in creating a Malian outfit is finding the right design, amount, and quality of fabric. First, there are 3 qualities/types of fabric : fancy, vacksy, and bazin. (in increasing order by price). So its important to know what you want beforehand so you can bargain with the vendor.  Bazin is often worn by the “big-shots” from Bamako but only for very important holidays for rural villagers. Most rural villagers settle on making a nice outfit made   out of a brightly colored vacksy, and those who are low on cash settle for fancy. To the left, our 2 favorite  Woso (fried sweet potato) ladies model Bazin and Vacksy outfits :)

Next, once you’ve settled on what you would like made with the fabric, you bring it to your tailor and explain. Do you want embroidery? a zipper in the back? a lining? Thats all going to cost extra. You chat and bargain over the price and once you’ve come to an agreement, you get measured and you’ll have a finished outfit within the next week. 

But what do people order at the tailor?

Women wear long wrap-skirts known in french as pagnes. This is basically a 2m x 1m piece of fabric tied around the waist. Only rarely and only in big cities have I seen Malian women in pants. In general, it’s simply not done here. Still, I get away with wearing pants in my village when I’m doing manuel labor or riding my bike because I’ve explained to my neighbors that I simply don’t know how to do those things in a skirt. The pagne is usually accompanied with a matching shirt made from the same material. Often shirts are long and loose, covering the shoulders.  However, the younger generation is starting to wear more western looking designs, like spaghetti straps, etc.  Women also wear bright colored head wraps, required if you are married. However, though I cover my head for very formal ceremonies, I’ve decided to pull the “tubabu” card in this area because its too hot to keep a head wrap on all the time! 

There are a few rules that are too essential to leave out :

Rule #1: Cover your knees. This is so important! If a woman takes off her shirt to breastfeed her child in public, people won’t even take notice. But if she shows her knees, everyone gets very uncomfortable.

Rule #2: Tie your skirt on the left side of your body. Only prostitutes tie on the right side as a way of advertising.

For men, the wardrobe is much more western. Men wear long cotton pants (never shorts except for playing soccer) and a collared shirt, often made of a Malian fabric. Formal wear for men is a long flowing Boubou (imagine a shirt that extends to your ankles)  and matching pants. Older men will often add a small prayer cap for extra style points.

One thing that  many Americans don’t realize is that a huge amount of our second hand clothes get flown to developing countries and are sold in local markets. They’re known as the “dead tubab” clothes because before they knew better, people thought the clothes came from white people who had died. Who else would have so much to give away? Now, whenever a word is misspelled or a shirt is printed upside down, they send the leftovers to developing countries like Mali. We often laugh when we see arrogant teenagers striding around in an Avril Lavigne or Madonna tshirt. Our previous host mother constantly wore a shirt advertising Ice Cream Sundaes for a local shop— torture in a place where you can’t get Ice Cream! The other day we even rode our bikes past a man wearing a University of Michigan jacket. It is very common to see these “dead tubab” clothes being mixed and matched with traditional clothing.  Our favorite example of this is a tiny little 7 year old next door who wears this huge coat when the temperature dips below 70 degrees F :) Adorable.

 

~Joye (and James)

Culture: Joking Cousins

Malian oral tradition tells of a wise king who ruled centuries ago during a time of widespread tribal conflict. Before his kingdom tore itself to pieces, the ruler had to think of way to stop the bloodshed while still allowing some outlet for ethnic tensions (a crucial element to peace-building that is often overlooked today). The king’s solution was an unusual one, but it seems to have worked. He declared that rival tribes become “joking cousins,” and that they had full permission to tease each other in a non-personal and non-threatening way.

Today, the concept of “joking cousins” is still very much alive. In fact, this blog post is long overdue, as it is a Malian cultural oddity that we experience on a daily basis. However, we have prolonged posting about it because the idea of a “joking cousin” is extremely foreign to Americans, and thus, can be difficult to fully explain. The basic concept is this: every family name has a set of other family names (former rival tribes) which they are explicitly supposed to make fun of for no other reason than it’s funny.

So, for cultural integration purposes, it is critical that each Peace Corps volunteer adopts a Malian family name and participates in the “joking cousins” game. Despite being married, Joye and I have different family names - both adopted our homestay families during training – which is okay here since women do not typically change their last name after marriage. Therefore, my last name, and not Joye’s last name, is Traore (Tra-or-ay), which has two major joking cousins: the Diarra (Jar-ra) and the Kone (Kon-ay). Therefore, whenever I meet either of these two, even for – or especially for – the first time, we will immediately start making fun of each other. It does not matter if the individual is a very respected elder, a merchant, or a young baby, there is full disclosure to tease, though certain insults are more common and appropriate than others.

When we first arrived, we were surprised by how childish some of the insults were, but after a while, we too began to think they were funny. For example, bean jokes are the most popular, and yes, they are funny for the same reason they are funny in the States. Simply telling people that they eat beans or farm beans is considered a low blow, though sometimes the jokes can get creative, like “even people in America know that Diarras like beans.”  However, never tell someone that their mom eats beans; I learned the hard way that that crosses the line. :)

Some other common insults simply cut down a person’s character, such as you’re bad, you’re mean, you’re stupid, you’re head is broken, and you’re the worst. And then you a few other classics, like you eat dog, you are a dog, you drink toilet water, and you speak donkey language. Lastly, it is not unusual to hear this little number - you’re my slave - though we haven’t quite found the nerve to try this one yet.

Other insults are saved for particular family names, and unlike the generic jokes listed above, these are more the type that we Americans might consider racial slurs. Joye’s adopted family name is a priceless example of this: Samake (Sa-ma-kay), which literally means “elephant man.” Therefore, Joye is constantly teased for being a big fat elephant woman. Thankfully, she doesn’t take it personally. Other examples include the Keita (Kay-tah) family, which are teased for being peanut farmers - think Jimmy Carter - and the Fulani peoples, who are known as the cow herders and milk sellers. However, most unfortunate is the Coulibaly (Koo-li-bah-lee) family, who can be teased by anyone. In fact, just calling someone “a Coulibaly” is an insult or a comic way of meeting someone for the first time.

Understanding and participating in “joking cousins” has done wonders for our cultural integration. It has helped us make instant friends with Traores and Samakes and sparked lively conversation with all of our rivals. Furthermore, it comes in handy when bargaining (“That’s too expensive you Coulibaly bean-eater!”), and is a great way to diffuse a tense situation into genuine laughter. There is nothing quite like in the States, but Mali couldn’t live without their “joking cousins.”

-James (& Joye)

Culture: Market Day

Going to a village market in Mali is always an experience.  One of the first and biggest hurdles to overcome is bargaining (but there’s a whole other post on that if you’re interested).  In a large city, market can be quite overwhelming, but because our village is so small, we get to see it as a fun social activity. Aside from shopping for food, fabric, and other odds and ends, we make the rounds and greet our favorite vendors, like Amadou, Awa, or Jenaba. And if we miss a week, everybody knows and makes sure to ask us where we were – just like any small town anywhere in the world. :) See more description and pictures below:

As you can see, a market consists of a series of thatched stands where sellers come in from surrounding villages and set up their merchandise 1 day per week, similar to a flee market or farmers market in the US.  (Above) We often start off our shopping with fruits and vegetables for the week since this is the 1 day that we have access to all these things. And yes, that’s a watermelon that Joye is holding. Gotta love Cold Season!

Another fun part of Malian markets is shopping for fabric, which you will later take to the tailor to be made into an outfit. Aside from all the beautiful colors, fabrics also differ in quality and therefore price. So you always need to know what you are bargaining for in order not to get ripped off. One advantage to living in a small village is that at this point, we’re on a first name basis with most vendors so they always offer us good prices :)

Buying Meat: Recently, after discovering that our villagers thought we were vegetarians because we didn't buy goat meat at the market, we decided we should make a more active effort to promote protein consumption in Kongodugu. It really is funny how much people are paying attention even when we think we’re doing simple everyday things. However, last week, the butcher  killed a cow, so we decided to go ahead and make a beef stew for dinner.  Now Malians eat almost every part of the animal, so (above left) Jim first examined the intestines, liver, heart, etc before asking for a 1/2 kilo of more…eh… normal meat—oh and no bones please! “What? No bones?” said the butcher. He then proceeded to grab his machete, cut a leg from the hanging carcass (shown right). Placing the leg on the table, he hacked off the leg muscle with a machete. Bone and muscle pieces flying everywhere. Jim and I had both wiped pieces of cow off our faces and clothes by the time our meat was ready. Of course, the Malians standing around were not phased in anyway other than simple confusion as to what we found so funny. Fun Fact: If you look to Jim’s left, on the ground lays the head of the cow, brains and nerves all exposed. Yum. I think it must be an advertising technique.

So at the end of the day, they tied our meat to a small string, did not place it in any kind of bag, and handed it over. So walked home holding this raw cow meat in front of us, trying not to drip any more on our clothes. Above middle, Jim holds up our dinner for photo documentation. Finally, since there is no meat grinder in village, Joye cut up the fresh, somewhat bloody, meat into bite size pieces for a beef, onion, and tomato stew (which, though the meat is pretty tough here, was still delicious).  So sure, if we had grown up on a farm in the United States, some of this would not be so foreign to us, but we thought most Americans would find this interesting, especially since shopping is such a huge part of the Christmas season. Hope you enjoyed reading!

 

~Joye

Culture: Malian Food and the Dining experience

I’m sure you all are busy with Thanksgiving preparations at the moment, so in the spirit of this great American holiday, we thought we’d share a little bit more about Malian delicacies.

Everyday, we cook our own breakfast and dinner (for our own personal sanity and health). But we do eat lunch with a “host family” aka our next door neighbors every day. Now, when we sit down to lunch with our host family, we now know to expect the following:

First, we will be passed an large old tomato paste can filled with water and (only due to our insistence) a  bar of soap to wash our hands.  Next, our “host mom” will place  2 large covered bowls on a stool or the ground, 1 bowl for sauce and 1 for toh (see description below), rice, or couscous. We recently realized that our host mom has figured out that we prefer pretty much anything to toh, because of the inaudible disappointed sigh which escapes us every time she removes the cover to reveal toh underneath. After combining the 2 ingredients,  we eat together out of 1 bowl, and only with our right hand (since they use the left hand to clean themselves after going to the bathroom).  Sauce is usually plentiful, but meat and veggies are expensive; therefore, a few pieces are placed in the center of the bowl and everyone gets a bite or two. Though its communal eating, everyone keeps to the food directly in front of them and it is considered rude to reach across and eat out of the other side of the bowl. Malians generally do not talk over meals, but simply eat their fill, wash their hands in that same tomato paste can, give thanks to God, back their chair away from the food and wait for everyone to finish eating before starting up more conversation. The last person eating always leaves a bit of food in the bowl to show the host that they didn’t leave hungry. But no matter how much you eat, as a guest, Malians are NEVER convinced that you ate enough! Therefore, the only polite way to turn down food is to very very firmly state that you are so full that if you eat any more food you will explode.

 

 

 

 

Eating some papaya for desert. We only had to bike 40 kilometers round trip to get it from a neighboring town since its not in season yet!

 

 

But WHAT exactly are we eating every day? Well, every malian dish has a base of carbohydrates. This usually is toh, which we’ve described as a cross between playdoh, mash potatoes, and a sponge. It is made out of millet, sorghum, or corn (in ascending order of taste). Rice is more expensive and therefore less common, and occasionally, we eat homemade millet, sorghum, or corn couscous. However, no matter the base, what really sets one meal apart from another is the sauce. 

 

Here are some examples of some classic Malian dishes (keep in mind, food in every region of Mali is different!)

1.) Toh and green okra sauce: Malians love their okra. There are some families who literally eat this 3 meals a day almost every day of the week. Now, If you’ve ever eaten okra, you may be familiar with the slimy muscus-like texture if retains after it has been cooked. The taste is fine but it was a little bit of a challenge to get over the texture of this dish.   However, about 4 months in to Peace Corps service, we’ve finally gotten used to this and are startled to find our selves even enjoying it from time to time.

2.) Rice and Tigedegena: This is one of my favorite dishes. Tigedegena is a spicy malian  peanut butter sauce cooked with tomatoes,  dried fish (remember landlocked country), and hot peppers. In Short, it is delicious and probably one of the few foods I’ll really miss when I leave Mali.

3.) Zame (zah-may): For special occasions, we have the Malian equivalent of Ris au Gras. This is rice dripping in oil, spices, and mixed with hot peppers. We ate quite a bit of this for Tabaski (the muslim thanksgiving) along with lamb or goat meat and a few vegetables.

 

4.) Toh and Onion Fish Sauce with Leaf Sauce: think vegetable soup broth  minus most of the veggies with a few dried fish (heads included). Not bad tasting at all, its just hard to convince people, that if everyone gets a tablespoon of eggplant, that this is NOT a complete serving of vegetables. Its also hard to explain why Americans don’t like fish heads (or goat intestine, etc) Directly before eating, the fish sauce is poured into the leaf sauce bowl and the toh is dipped into mixed sauces. This means you REALLY need to make sure everyone washed their hands with soap before dinner!

5.) Monni/Siri : Millet, sorghum or corn powder + powdered milk + a little sugar  + water =malian breakfast porridge. We don’t eat this as much any more since we make breakfast for ourselves every morning. It tastes fine, its just not very nutritious.  So one of my side projects is to have conversations with people about adding peanut powder to give some much needed protein to their kids who show severe signs of malnutrition.

So in summation, while we enjoy Malian food for 1 meal a day, we have decided to cook dinners for ourselves in order to get enough vegetables, protein, and variety to keep us happy and healthy. We’re also looking forward to our own American Thanksgiving feast with other volunteers. We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

 

~Joye (and Jim)

Culture: How to Start a Garden

A simple reality of Malian life that we have had difficulty expressing to our blog readers is how long it can take to get things done. Yes, this is because we are still developing our language skills, but let’s just say that Malian culture – for better or worse – is less “efficient” than what we are used to. For example, starting a small garden in the United States (prior to planting) can be done with some effort over the weekend. But here, it has taken two months…

 

Task 1) Attain the desired seeds and gardening tools

Step 1. Ask mom for vegetables seeds and gardening gloves from America

Step 2. Bike 20 miles round-trip to buy a metal shovel and machete

Step 3. Take bus to big city to buy watering can and some Malian seeds

Step 4. Pick up care package, thank mom and Gruler’s of Petoskey, MI for donating the seeds

Step 5. Order “dabas” (Malian hoe) from blacksmith at site

Step 6. Wait and pick up dabas two weeks later

 

Task 2) Construct a compost pile since enriched soil is not available

Step 1. Start collecting kitchen scraps in a smelly plastic bucket

Step 2. Find out a nearby location where cows like to poop

Step 3. Use the shovel to dig a shallow meter-by-meter hole

Step 4. Periodically pile food scraps, cow crap, and dirt into the hole

Step 5. Watch as melon seeds accidently take root and start to grow

Step 6. Watch as children accidently trample melon one week later

Step 7. After some time, turn the entire pile and add more cow poop

Step 8. Wait for decomposition

 

Task 3) Find a convenient location for your garden

Step 1. Scout the area for good soil close to a reliable water source

Step 2. Set up a meeting with the village chief to ask permission

Step 3. Wait a week until that meeting

Step 4. Get approval to use that land for gardening

Step 5. Find out that your location is actually some guy’s poorly-tended peanut field

Step 6. Wait weeks for the peanuts to be harvested

Step 7. Watch others harvest their peanuts, but not this guy

Step 8. Wonder if this guy is mad at you for getting permission to take his land

Step 9. Consider asking the village chief for different land, but figure it will take too long

Step 10. Measure off your garden with a meter stick

 

Task 4) Construct a fence to protect your garden from free-grazing animals

Step 1. Decide to buy an expensive metal-fence instead of building a wooden one

Step 2. Travel to a large city and ask a half dozen shopkeepers about their fencing

Step 3. Bargain a great deal for 25 meters of fencing

Step 4. Have Peace Corps drive fencing out to site, since it’s crazy heavy

Step 5. Go out into the bush with machete and a friendly farmer to cut trees

Step 6. Watch capable farmer cut down eleven trees without your help

Step 7. Load trees onto a donkey cart

Step 8. Save the donkey’s life after cart tips over and nearly chokes it to death

Step 9. Reload trees, transport, and unload them by garden plot

Step 10. Prepare to dig eleven holes with a shovel in order to set up tree perimeter

Step 11. Get angry when condescendingly told you have to dig holes with a machete

Step 12. Insist that you know how and it is better to use a shovel

Step 13. After one hole, dig ten more holes with machete

Step 14. Place eleven trees in holes and fill in tightly with rocks and sand

Step 15. Unroll metal fence to discover that its only 14 meters… not 25

Step 16. Take a deep breath

Step 17. Answer Malian’s questions about why your fence is too short

Step 18. Prepare to travel back to large city after a week

Step 19. Tie gigantic fence to bike rack and precariously take it 3 miles to the road

Step 20. Throw it on top of a bus and buy a ticket to ride

Step 21. Return to shopkeeper and lose temper in foreign language

Step 22. Get money back

Step 23. Find another shopkeeper and make him measure fence first

Step 24. Bargain a price and return to village… somehow

 

Task 5) Prepare the garden bed (I have yet to do this, mind you)

Step 1. Use daba to weed and aerate the soil

Step 2. Water with watering can and wait for a few days

Step 3. Use shovel to overturn soil with double-digging method

Step 4. Mix the compost into soil

Step 5. Form the vegetable beds sunken, since rainy season is almost over

Step 6. Make a seed nursery with sticks and cover (for select vegetables only)

Step 7. Plant the seeds with proper spacing… finally

Step 8. Keep in mind that, in reality, more steps are probably necessary

 

So, as you can see, work here in Mali is a little bit different. :) Thanks for reading!

 

~Jim

Culture: Bargaining

As we’ve recently been working on furnishing our house, buying paint supplies for Joye’s World Map mural, and garden supplies for our garden, making purchases has been an everyday part of life. However, unlike the United States where a vast economy organizes all of its items into specialized stores with competitive pricing, in Mali, you simply go to the market and bargain for the price you’re willing to pay—I know what you’re thinking, this is my mom’s dream.

However, bargaining in Mali isn’t as easy as it sounds. Firstly, bargaining is done in Bambara. And yes, while a nice decently paced conversation was easy enough to keep up with considering our language skills, bargaining is not usually a nice patient conversation.

But here’s where it gets interesting… the Malian unit of currency is the West African CFA (pronounced safe-uh). Though there is probably some bartering that goes on between friends and neighbors, almost all purchases are done using coins. The problem is that the majority of  Malians are illiterate and can not read the numbers on the coins. Instead, they just memorized what the coins look like. Now, the lowest unit is a 5 CFA coin. So Malians say the Bambara word for 1 (one) when they see this coin. Therefore, instead of saying the word for 20 CFA, they say 4, as in 4 units of 5.  This means whenever someone tells you a price, you not only have to understand what they’re saying in Bambara but you also have to multiply it by 5 to get the real price! Confused yet?

Example: in market, I ask a vendor “How much is that plastic bucket?” He replies “Eighty.” In my head, I think, “80 x 5 = 400, ok 400 cfa.” Im only willing to pay 300 CFA. “Take 2o off of your price and I’ll buy it",” I say, which means I want him to take 100 CFA off. 

The final difficulty with bargaining is what we call “the Tubab factor.” (Note: Tubab is the Malian name for a white person). To most Malians, the fact that we have white skin is synonymous with wearing a billboard that says “I’m rich and want to give you all my money.” Therefore, unless people know you, you can expect for vendors to tell you that the price is between 2-5 times the amount that they would charge another Malian.  For example, when bargaining for a traditional Malian outfit, we got frustrated with a vendor who vehemently insisted that his final price was a great deal at 12,000 CFA, (down from the original 15,000 CFA after we bargained for 15 minutes) and it took us walking out of the shop saying “Im sorry, we really only wanted to spend 6,000 CFA today” before he leaned in and mumbled, “ok, fine. 6,000? you can have it." Thus, having the language skills to bargain effectively (along with a little stubbornness) is the only sure way to make sure you aren’t getting completely ripped off.

You can probably imagine how mentally exhausting this was for us at the beginning of our stay here. Who knew how well my multiplication/division skills were going to strengthen by doing the Peace Corps :) We used to try to get in and out of market as fast as possible because it was so difficult to deal with language, the pushy vendors, and the math. However, now that we’ve figured it out, market day in Kongodugu is our favorite day of the week. We wander from stall to stall, greeting our favorite vendors, gathering fruits and veggies for the week, and bargaining on a few meters of cloth or a cooking pot. Its been encouraging to see how much we’ve improved over a few months and its always rewarding to see that surprised smile creep onto vendors’ faces when they realize “Here are 2 Tubabs who know how to bargain.”

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