One month at site: CHECK
Passage from my first day at site, the place where I am living and working for the next two years, from my journal:
"1st night at site and I just cried and called dad. It's all good, and I am just having a hard time imagining this for two months. But I know I can do it. Jamie told me some profound advice - that this is my chance to go out here, with no distractions and become Malian."
Well, only a month later - a month that, at times, seemed like monthS, and at other times, flew by - I'm starting my journey to become as Malian as possible while bringing some American flavor to the lives of the Malians with whom I live and work.
We had a session on culture shock, during training, and they were referring to it as an emotional roller coaster, that can occur during periods of time and even during the day. Sooo true...
I'd say the first two weeks at site were the hardest, and there are harder times to come, I'm sure, but the important thing is I've found some very useful ways of handling the loneliness, homesickness and daily frustrations that can occur as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Keys to sanity the last month:
1. DANCING! Anytime, everywhere, with anyone
2. Harry Potter
3. Spending time alone, away from Malians
4. Listening to my Ipod and American music - singing and dance parties
5. Writing - journal, or letters
6. Bike rides around my village, some times in very populated areas, and sometimes behind my village where the only passersby are on donkey cart
7. Staying busy and productive - to-do lists, weekly goals
8. Occasionally calling home/friends, 4 AM or in the middle of the day
9. Learning a wide variety of things about my village - school system, how to cook TO, how the hospital works, etc
These things have been crucial to my sanity, and have helped me be a happy, productive volunteer.
1. DANCING
--> Malians love dancing. I see little babies burst into dance moves when music plays. I've been to eight dance parties in my village, so far - and plan on going to MANY more. I've taught some embarrassing American-style dance moves I would never do in America...but they love it here!
On my birthday, April 22, it was during that first two week period in which everything was hard at site - and my morning started by crying when my homologue asked my how much phone credit I bought at the butiki (sounds trivial, but if you were here you would totally understand. Money is a pretty sensitive topic here as a PCV). I called one of my friends here in Mali, vented a little and talked to my mom and dad for a while.
Later, two other volunteers came into my village to celebrate with me. When we got to my house - everything had changed - my host family had set up a boom box/stereo system and were playing Malian music while my host mom shuffled to get us to sit down in the best chairs in the compound.
My host mom had spent the day preparing a delicious meal for my friends and me - dough balls with sauce and meat - special, for my birthday.
My host family had set up this stereo system so we could listen to music and dance! How cute! So they, true to Malian tradition, formed a circle while my friends and me danced in the middle while they all screamed "SHO!! SHO!! SHO!!!"
After my friends left, I heard a bunch of dancing and screaming and clapping and music outside my compound. Turns out, my family and neighbors organized a dance party for my village for my birthday!! How can someone be sad when they had a village dance party organized in their honor!!??
So, I ended up spending the night DANCING for my birthday, and it was a wonderful birthday. One of the best.
Every time I danced, they'd form in a circle around me, clap excitedly and yell "SHO!" while I danced. This is a Malian way of dancing - and after you're done - they throw your hand up and yell "SHOOOOO!" while others clap.
My birthday night was the first of four-night-in-a-row dance parties, also because it was right before Easter. The young people in my village celebrated Easter (they were all Muslim, but the town had Easter celebrations) with dance party after dance party. There were dance parties outside people's houses. At the church. In random fields. At the town meeting place. Outside my house with music made of old coffee cans and metal tins and drum sticks transformed from sticks. People danced in unison, all exactly the same, and people danced like Michael Jackson. In fact, I'd say Michael Jackson-style dance moves were the most I saw! It's really fun to watch.
We'd play cards at dance parties and drink tea. People would be sitting on their motos, chatting, off in the distance. Kids would be gathered around, trying out new dance moves with each other. I taught some English slang at the dance parties and danced many times to Shakira's new song "Waka Waka," which my host sisters really like. I danced in unison with a guy who I only refer to as "Sho dunna" which means "Bean eater," while the crowd clapped and danced. We danced to Akon, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Amadou and Miriam.
One particularly fun dance party was about a week or so ago, when the rain and dust started getting really bad. When there are dust storms here, you have to take cover or else you get smothered with dust. It hurts. And you eat dust.
Anyway, we had a dance party in my house during the dust storm. We DANCED until the dust storm was "A banna" - or finished. We were sweating profusely, our clothes drenched, but laughing and had a great time. I turned on my Ipod and speakers and played Lady Gaga, Amadou and Miriam, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, but especially "Hakuna Matata" from the Lion King soundtrack, haha (You find that anything that lifts your spirits is a life saver here - hence my new obsession with dance parties, Harry Potter and the Lion King soundtrack). and we all put on random sunglasses and danced. They'd usually just copy whatever moves I did. By the time we were done, the dust was gone. :)
8. Occasionally calling home
--> I've learned something about myself - I need to be able to talk to friends and family when I want to. I've learned that splurging a little on phone credit to call my bestie in Ukraine, or call friends in America, or call my parents at home, is well, well worth it.
Two particularly interesting times calling home were at 4 AM, and another, at 2 AM. A few days after my birthday, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt like absolute crap. It was probably at least 100 degrees or more in my house, and all my sheets and pillow were soaked with sweat. My entire body ached from head to toe and I could tell I had a fever.
Unlike when I'm sick in the States, I had no ice cold water to drink to cool down. In fact, in the USA, I wouldn't wake up sweating like that because I would have AC. I had no one to make me soup and watch movies with until I felt better. It was just me in my hot house and my med kit. I ended up having a throat infection and a gastrointestinal parasite, heat rash, a developing allergy to mangoes and dehydration!!! All at once!! Anyway, I called my mom at 4 AM when I woke up to complain that I felt like I was getting malaria! This was before I knew I had a throat infection and parasite. My mom ended up misunderstanding me and thinking I for sure had malaria. She posted it on her Facebook. Ha, not malaria!
The other time, was at 2 AM. I woke up because there was a bird flying in my house. At 2 AM. I switched on my lantern and realized this was no bird flying around my room, running all over my stuff, knocking stuff down. It was an enormous COCKROACH. Great.
You may know of my deep seated fear of the mutant cockroaches here. They live inside the nyegen and come out only at night. They are little monsters and literally, literally, as big as my big toe. Well, this cockroach was no exception. It was buzzing all around my room, landing on my clothes, my vitamins and finally, on top of my mosquito net.
Haha well, I started screaming, frozen in fear, thinking that there is no way in HELL I am getting out of my mosquito net to kill that thing. I obsessively tucked in each centimeter of my mosquito net to make sure that nasty creature couldn't sneak in. I was terrified because just a week earlier my friend had texted me and told me a mutant cockroach had crawled over him while he was sleeping. I did NOT want that to happen to me!
I can handle the at least 35 spiders I've killed in my house in the last month. I can handle the four scorpions I've killed in my house. I can handle chickens pooping, donkeys screaming and lizards shooting out of my nyegen when I move my nyegen cover, but I am terrified of cockroaches!
Well, my screaming woke up my host dad, who was yelling at me through my locked screen door in the other room. By the time he got there, it was about 3 AM and the cockroach was now sprinting around, quite loudly, on the plastic that covers my roof right above my head.
In addition, I wasn't exactly wearing daytime-appropriate clothes. My host dad ended up breaking my door down to help me out! I was wrapped in a sheet, with my lantern on, trying to describe what was going on in Bambara while my host dad was thrashing around my house, looking for the mutant cockroach that had finally decided to run away, hopefully outside of my house. So, when he came to help, there was no cockroach. Womp womp.
After this fiasco ended, there was no way in hell I could sleep, and it was 4 AM and still felt like an oven in my house. I ended up calling my friend back home while he laughed at my idiocy. I'm sorry - I'm just really afraid of cockroaches. And Mali happens to have abnormally large and disgusting cockroaches.
This story is actually pretty embarrassing to put out there on the Internet, but, hey, it's part of my Peace Corps experience, and if you're reading this and thinking about the Peace Corps too - it could be part of yours.
I'm going to wrap up this post. I have learned a lot about site and some of the major issues I am going to try to tackle in the next two years. That's for the next post. Thanks everyone for your support! I've been doing everything I can to become Malian...more about that in the next posts!
Laura Vest
AKA Ramata
Passage from my first day at site, the place where I am living and working for the next two years, from my journal:
"1st night at site and I just cried and called dad. It's all good, and I am just having a hard time imagining this for two months. But I know I can do it. Jamie told me some profound advice - that this is my chance to go out here, with no distractions and become Malian."
Well, only a month later - a month that, at times, seemed like monthS, and at other times, flew by - I'm starting my journey to become as Malian as possible while bringing some American flavor to the lives of the Malians with whom I live and work.
 |
| My host sister and I cooking kous kous, an extremely long process in which they cook the kous kous and sift it in the little screen thing next to me, on my right. They cook it again, sift it three times, repeat. |
 |
| The salidaga - This is the Malian form of TP. It's full of water. That's also why Malians don't use their left hand for stuff like eating, shaking hands, etc. We have to take it to the nyegen with us every single time or else Malians might think we're gross. Ha I won't give up TP. |
Keys to sanity the last month:
1. DANCING! Anytime, everywhere, with anyone
2. Harry Potter
 |
| At site, I've read Harry Potter 1, 3, 4 and have started 5.We have all the books at my stage house library, except HP2. I can't stop reading them! It's perfect for the PC for many reasons, but it's nice to have something light-hearted and creative |
 |
| This is what I do during the hottest part of the day - tile. I sit in my room, in my wooden chair, read, write in my journal, talk on the phone, study Bambara and/or listen to my Ipod. I like to prop up my feet too. |
5. Writing - journal, or letters
 |
| This is me propping up my feet and writing a letter - old fashioned style. |
7. Staying busy and productive - to-do lists, weekly goals
 |
| Some of my Bambara verbs - Bambara on the left, French in the middle, and English on the right. Most used verbs: Baroke (to chat), Tea wuli (to make tea), Lafine (to Rest/Nap), Yala yala (to walk around), and of course - Donke (to dance) |
9. Learning a wide variety of things about my village - school system, how to cook TO, how the hospital works, etc
These things have been crucial to my sanity, and have helped me be a happy, productive volunteer.
1. DANCING
--> Malians love dancing. I see little babies burst into dance moves when music plays. I've been to eight dance parties in my village, so far - and plan on going to MANY more. I've taught some embarrassing American-style dance moves I would never do in America...but they love it here!
On my birthday, April 22, it was during that first two week period in which everything was hard at site - and my morning started by crying when my homologue asked my how much phone credit I bought at the butiki (sounds trivial, but if you were here you would totally understand. Money is a pretty sensitive topic here as a PCV). I called one of my friends here in Mali, vented a little and talked to my mom and dad for a while.
Later, two other volunteers came into my village to celebrate with me. When we got to my house - everything had changed - my host family had set up a boom box/stereo system and were playing Malian music while my host mom shuffled to get us to sit down in the best chairs in the compound.
My host mom had spent the day preparing a delicious meal for my friends and me - dough balls with sauce and meat - special, for my birthday.
My host family had set up this stereo system so we could listen to music and dance! How cute! So they, true to Malian tradition, formed a circle while my friends and me danced in the middle while they all screamed "SHO!! SHO!! SHO!!!"
After my friends left, I heard a bunch of dancing and screaming and clapping and music outside my compound. Turns out, my family and neighbors organized a dance party for my village for my birthday!! How can someone be sad when they had a village dance party organized in their honor!!??
So, I ended up spending the night DANCING for my birthday, and it was a wonderful birthday. One of the best.
Every time I danced, they'd form in a circle around me, clap excitedly and yell "SHO!" while I danced. This is a Malian way of dancing - and after you're done - they throw your hand up and yell "SHOOOOO!" while others clap.
My birthday night was the first of four-night-in-a-row dance parties, also because it was right before Easter. The young people in my village celebrated Easter (they were all Muslim, but the town had Easter celebrations) with dance party after dance party. There were dance parties outside people's houses. At the church. In random fields. At the town meeting place. Outside my house with music made of old coffee cans and metal tins and drum sticks transformed from sticks. People danced in unison, all exactly the same, and people danced like Michael Jackson. In fact, I'd say Michael Jackson-style dance moves were the most I saw! It's really fun to watch.
We'd play cards at dance parties and drink tea. People would be sitting on their motos, chatting, off in the distance. Kids would be gathered around, trying out new dance moves with each other. I taught some English slang at the dance parties and danced many times to Shakira's new song "Waka Waka," which my host sisters really like. I danced in unison with a guy who I only refer to as "Sho dunna" which means "Bean eater," while the crowd clapped and danced. We danced to Akon, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Amadou and Miriam.
One particularly fun dance party was about a week or so ago, when the rain and dust started getting really bad. When there are dust storms here, you have to take cover or else you get smothered with dust. It hurts. And you eat dust.
Anyway, we had a dance party in my house during the dust storm. We DANCED until the dust storm was "A banna" - or finished. We were sweating profusely, our clothes drenched, but laughing and had a great time. I turned on my Ipod and speakers and played Lady Gaga, Amadou and Miriam, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, but especially "Hakuna Matata" from the Lion King soundtrack, haha (You find that anything that lifts your spirits is a life saver here - hence my new obsession with dance parties, Harry Potter and the Lion King soundtrack). and we all put on random sunglasses and danced. They'd usually just copy whatever moves I did. By the time we were done, the dust was gone. :)
8. Occasionally calling home
--> I've learned something about myself - I need to be able to talk to friends and family when I want to. I've learned that splurging a little on phone credit to call my bestie in Ukraine, or call friends in America, or call my parents at home, is well, well worth it.
Two particularly interesting times calling home were at 4 AM, and another, at 2 AM. A few days after my birthday, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt like absolute crap. It was probably at least 100 degrees or more in my house, and all my sheets and pillow were soaked with sweat. My entire body ached from head to toe and I could tell I had a fever.
Unlike when I'm sick in the States, I had no ice cold water to drink to cool down. In fact, in the USA, I wouldn't wake up sweating like that because I would have AC. I had no one to make me soup and watch movies with until I felt better. It was just me in my hot house and my med kit. I ended up having a throat infection and a gastrointestinal parasite, heat rash, a developing allergy to mangoes and dehydration!!! All at once!! Anyway, I called my mom at 4 AM when I woke up to complain that I felt like I was getting malaria! This was before I knew I had a throat infection and parasite. My mom ended up misunderstanding me and thinking I for sure had malaria. She posted it on her Facebook. Ha, not malaria!
The other time, was at 2 AM. I woke up because there was a bird flying in my house. At 2 AM. I switched on my lantern and realized this was no bird flying around my room, running all over my stuff, knocking stuff down. It was an enormous COCKROACH. Great.
 |
| This is my bedroom. And my mosquito net. That nasty little cockroach was running all over my mosquito net while I was wrapped in my sheet, screaming. Oh, Mali. |
 |
| My personal nyegen/"bathroom", or also known as, home to the cockroaches after dark. |
I can handle the at least 35 spiders I've killed in my house in the last month. I can handle the four scorpions I've killed in my house. I can handle chickens pooping, donkeys screaming and lizards shooting out of my nyegen when I move my nyegen cover, but I am terrified of cockroaches!
 |
| Nyegen hole. Yep, this is my "toilet" for the next two years. Cockroaches and lizards live down there. Just so you know. |
In addition, I wasn't exactly wearing daytime-appropriate clothes. My host dad ended up breaking my door down to help me out! I was wrapped in a sheet, with my lantern on, trying to describe what was going on in Bambara while my host dad was thrashing around my house, looking for the mutant cockroach that had finally decided to run away, hopefully outside of my house. So, when he came to help, there was no cockroach. Womp womp.
After this fiasco ended, there was no way in hell I could sleep, and it was 4 AM and still felt like an oven in my house. I ended up calling my friend back home while he laughed at my idiocy. I'm sorry - I'm just really afraid of cockroaches. And Mali happens to have abnormally large and disgusting cockroaches.
This story is actually pretty embarrassing to put out there on the Internet, but, hey, it's part of my Peace Corps experience, and if you're reading this and thinking about the Peace Corps too - it could be part of yours.
 |
| Nyegen hole. Fun fun. Welcome to life as a Peace Corps volunteer!! |
Laura Vest
AKA Ramata
I can only imagine you screaming about a threatening cockroach! It was a good laugh. I enjoy reading about your experiences. take care and good luck!
ReplyDeleteewwwww lol cockroaches are the worst! you are definately being tested girl! stay strong agaisnt gross bugs! im glad i am getting a forewarning :)
ReplyDelete^ love emily leet
ReplyDeleteGreat story! Yeah, we had those humongous cockroaches in Ecuador, too. They leave little black poop marks/stains on your books. I still have them on a Joy of Cooking in my kitchen 30 years on!--the black spots, not the roaches! I don't have the heart to throw out the book; the newer editions just aren't as good. My kids, who love to cook, have no idea what those spots are... :) They'll find out if any of them join the Peace Corps!
ReplyDeleteNo point in fighting the roaches, I think. I learned to live with the rats next door to me, and the poisonous coral snake I once saw just outside the drain pipe leading into my bedroom floor....You'll just have to practice being chill, in preparation for the time when someone you know from USA decides to visit you! Hehe... Try thinking of them as scarab beetles or something. Hey, at least roaches don't bite (I mean, the Ecuadorian ones didn't). Probably preferable to NYC bedbugs...and Lyme disease deer-ticks creeping up your legs under your clothes in Connecticut... But cover your food if they are coming out of the nyegen! Try using a "chamber pot" (a pot you pee in that sits under your bed) if you don't want to go into the nyegen at night. You just empty it in the morning. Maybe you can clean it with the dust, so as not to waste water?
Do they use the human waste for fertilizer there? They do in Ecuador and rural China (after it composts awhile). Fermented urine is a great fertilizer. Honestly, the vegetables in China taste much better than in USA--but you will notice that the Chinese never eat them raw! When in Rome...
Continued below (sorry about the tome!).
Continued from above...
ReplyDeleteYou will find out at your site that there is a darned good reason for EVERYTHING the local people do...although it may take you a year and a half to realize what that reason is.
In Ecuador, I was advised to work on latrine projects, because the Americans had decided that intestinal parasites were Bad, and they realized that the lifecycle of the parasites could be interrupted if only human feces went into latrines, instead of disintegrating into the topsoil near the rural homes. That seemed reasonable, and a good project, so I worked hard at it for over a year....and I managed to convince several of the leading community members at my site and another nearby village to dig latrines behind their homes. Well and good...until one day enlightenment came. I had wondered for a while why I never actually saw feces on the ground around my village. I recalled walking to school as a child in the USA, at a time when nobody had heard of "curbing your dog". There were always some doggie doo's to avoid on the way to school: stinking plops right in the middle of the sidewalk, which, if your attention wandered, would have to be wiped off your shoes. In school, the kids seated nearby would impune, "OK, who stepped it it?!", and you would be a pariah for a day, because your shoe still smelled a bit. Yet in Ecuador, in a village with many people in each home, I had only seen 1-2 stools in over a year!
Then came a day when I walked the 2 miles to a neighboring town to visit my nearest PCV friend for a cultural respite. (We had no cellphones in those days; to call my parents I had to travel an hour to reach the nearest phone where I could dial the USA!) Anyway, as I strode down a dirt road past banana and oil-palm plantations, and through fruit orchards, I felt a call of nature that could not be postponed. I went off the side of the road, squatted discretely in the underbrush, and made my deposit gratefully. I then returned to the road verge, and was just about to walk away, when I was shocked to see a large local dog approach my excrement eagerly--and EAT IT, with enthusiasm! The revelation was a long time in coming, but when it did, I could see how odd my Peace Corps project must have seemed to the villagers. Why was I so obsessed about the disposition of feces? They had more pressing problems! This discovery led to further observations: the pigs happily demolished the dogs' excrement, and the chickens worked on anybody else's left-overs.... Maybe if you grew up on an American farm, you already know these things; but I was a city girl, and had no idea. And obviously most of the Developmental Officers in agencies around the world had no idea either! Live and learn.
Continued below again...
Continued again... (Last section!)
ReplyDeleteTrust the local people at your site. They are not dummies. They are doing the best they can with what they have, and there is a good reason why they do all the things they do! If you observe closely, you will learn a lot. Maybe you can help them...or maybe they will help you. The most important thing is that you will learn to understand/respect/love another culture, and this education will help you, your friends and family, and our own country, to make better decisions in the world. Since we are the ones with the nuclear bombs, it is very important that we not mis-interpret and misunderestimate other peoples/cultures. The only way to really understand another culture, is to live in it, and you will learn far more in your second year than in your first. The hardest time is the 3-6 months after arrival. The novelty has worn off, but you are not comfortably integrated yet. Your spirits and motivation sag a bit, and you feel hopelessly foreign with no real friends. You wonder what you were thinking, to do this! Hang in there; at the end of a year, you suddenly start to "belong", and it's better. The worst times are often when you learn the most, about them, and about you. It's a really important experience that you will remember fondly your whole life; and it will deeply affect your life in a good way. Find a way to embrace the dust and the roaches somehow.
After studing ecosystems in biology, and working in primary care medicine for 20 years, I have to say that I'm more philosophical about things like parasites and bacteria and such. Obviously there are some bad ones that cause disease, but taken in moderation, most of these things are just part of the ecosystems inside us and outside us that have evolved in tandem over millions of years. Last year, I heard someone on National Public Radio propose a theory that having parasites "on board" in his intestines (in his case, hookworms in moderation) actually CURED his terrible seasonal allergies! He said he was "harvesting" hookworms out of his feces, "processing" (washing) them, and actually selling them online! He said they have been in some demand, by allergy sufferers. OK, I don't think I'd go for someone else's personal hookworms...but the point is, how do we know that the things we think are "Bad" really are? If they evolved with us over millions of years, then our bodies may actually be more "used" to their presence than otherwise. Getting rid of them entirely may have some downside. This is a Yin/Yang balance thing. Yin needs Yang, and Yang needs Yin. If you kill all the wolves, then the rabbits will eat your crops! Different parts of ecosystems "need" each other or "balance" each other in ways we don't always understand. We need to observe more closely before we act. Wolves and parasites are neither Bad, nor Good. They just Are. Cultures and customs are (by and large) neither Bad nor Good. They just Are. OK, Hitler was Evil, and one can definitely go too far toward Relativism...but right now our globe and society are very polarized, and we need to move toward a more "balanced" (?yin/yang?!) view, so to speak. This I believe. Got it from my Peace Corp experience.
Laura I.ve heard alot of this but I had a similar experience in Louisiana. I know just how you feel. I'm not embarrased-they're horrible. Love ya mom
ReplyDelete