Thoughts from first real day at site

First real day at site: I am satisfied with myself today. I kicked today's ass.

Peace Corps has been really difficult lately - and in addition to my site change, which has its own challenges, it's like pulling teeth to go back to a new site after spending one month with your friends having fun. But, today, I went into my community. And it was a super productive day.

I think a lot of why I've been dreading going back to site has to do with a long-time-coming realization: Mali is real (the fact that I'm here is real). And it's really freaking poor. There is real poverty here and problems that a lot of us feel like we can never, ever make a dent in fixing.

Like the starving kid I saw sleeping on a potato sack on the ground last Saturday. The butt of his soiled pants was torn off. And the shacks I see on an everyday basis here, clutching together by a thread.

But, today was a good example of exactly how to make a dent in Mali's problems - keep on keeping on. Push through, even when things seem too big to overcome.

During my bike ride to my service today, I realized my month long vacation has done a number on my body. But, that's a different story. Anyway, everyone was so happy to see me today. I couldn't even believe I had dreaded going there. These are the nicest people on the planet.

My goal was to just hang out today. But I was surprised when I was able to hang ALL day, almost seven hours, and speak Bambara so well. My Bambara is a helluva lot better than I thought.

My service is amazing. But really, the woman who runs it is the backbone of that organization's success. Everyone who knows her comments on how bad ass she is.

She runs the service, which makes shea butter and exports it to other countries in Africa. The service also runs a grainery and restaurant. There's a women's garden there. They make shea butter, dish washing soap, shea soap, peanut butter (yes, from scratch), Baobab powder for cooking, Baobab candy, honey (from scratch), Bogolan (the awesome mud and leave-dyed fabric of Mali), carpet, dry onions and tomatoes, dye fabric and store and sell rice. That's quite a lot of skills for one person to have, let alone an organization in which most of the people are handicapped, especially in a place like Mali, where Malians think persons with disabilities cannot work. These women (and a few men) kick some serious ass in that department.

They do it all while sitting in these makeshift wheel chairs they have to crank with their arms in a circle. There are no brakes on the wheel chairs, they just stop it with their hands on the wheel. A lot of them are made out of steel and wood. I think a lot of them are handicapped because of polio.

Today, I ate dege for breakfast. Dege is a breakfast food here in Mali that doesn't exist in America. It's kind of like yogurt, sugar, millet, powdered milk and maybe something else all mixed together, refridgerated and put into a sachet to drink from. It's my favorite for b-fast.

Anyway, I didn't eat all of mine, so I gave it to Sabou, the badass woman I keep mentioning, who is also serving as one of my homologues.

In return, she brought a traveling meat salesman to the service (shea yoro la, as we say in Bambara) to hand pick the best goat meat for me to give me. It was delicious, and unlike a bunch of Malian meat, it didn't have shards of bones stuck in it and it wasn't brains or stomach. (goat stomach meat looks like shag carpet, it's gross)

I got into a conversation with them about how the eagle is America's bird, and then we started talking about owls. Malians are really superstitious. There are at least two animals that I know they're really scared of, because they think they're really witches who will eat people or perform creepy magic on them. These are toads and owls.

Well, the one guy was not afraid of toads. He went and picked up a toad and told me how toads make great medicine here in Mali.

Now, I've heard some messed up shit here in Mali. I've been guilty of judging Malians, thinking, "I CANNOT believe people believe this!!" But this took the cake.

The guy told me that you can rub a toad belly on your forehead if you have a headache. But then, it got more shocking (that people actually believe this)...he said if your eye hurts, you should cut open a toad and pour its blood into your eye. And your eyeache will go away.

To make matters more interesting, another traveling meat salesman came at this time, and was selling goat brains.

On a less creepy note, they did tell me that God is happy when people dance. There's a saying here that's something like, when a person dances, he/she is happy, so God is happy too.

After hanging out for a while, I went into the market to get some stuff for my new house and I ended up having the best conversations with my community members. I made some goals last night, including describing who I am and introducing myself to as many people who would listen.


Other goals for this week:
--Dancing when I'm stressed
--Going outside and being in the community when I feel like closing myself in my house instead
--Learn the way (without getting lost) to both of my services
--Start working out again (IST severely ruined my workout streak)
--Check out the CSCOM (hospital), school house and mayor's office
--Hire my tutor

I think I had the best bargaining tactics I've ever used, and I got everything today for a great price. I also found a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt in what we call the "dead Toubab" piles of clothes.

"Dead Toubab" piles are clothes donated from mostly America that Malians buy for usually the equivalent of 10-20 cents. "Dead Toubab" piles are 1) a saving grace for me here in Mali and 2) the reason why you see "Ganja farmer," "Gang bang me" and other T-shirts in English that Malians can't read. Seriously, those are t-shirts we've seen on Malians here.

I bought nails, headphones, potatoes, clothes from the "Dead Toubab" piles, a bathroom mat and a hand-made broom from the sugu (market), and bargained my ass off in perfect Bambara on them all.

Then I came home, arranged stuff in my house (still unpacking, but it's looking like a home), listened to the new Rhianna song on repeat and did some laundry by hand. It's been a good day.

Sometimes I am sad that I have no big family here in Kita. My last host family consisted of more than 20 people. My host family now is an old lady, who looks about 80, and her two grand daughters, 16 and 11 years old. It's a large, but empty concession. But I don't have people up in my business 24 hours a day.

I am able to walk places by myself, hang out in my house without being bothered and hit up the stage house whenever I want, and no one is there to stick by my side. I thought that would bother me, but I love the independence here.

I can't imagine staying here for more than a month without leaving, but I am taking it one day at a time at this point. This second-time-around-integration is going to be challenging, but I know I can tackle it. Little by little = dooni dooni as I say every day here.