Adjusting

First, I suppose I should reintroduce myself. Hello! My name is Aisha Deyoko. I've now been in Mali for about a week, and am still adapting to life here. It's definitely really from life back home, or anywhere else I've ever been. I apologize in advance for what will probably be a marathon post, but so much has happened in the past 2 weeks or so since my last post, I'm going to have a hard time keeping it short. Also, sorry there are no photos, my internet connections too slow for me to feasibly be able to post any right now. I'll try again next post.

Almost 2 weeks ago now, on December 26th, I finished some last minute packing, said goodbye to Juan, Hugh, and my parents, and left Eugene, headed for my first destination, New York City. I spent about 3 days there, thanks to Harper and her family's generosity, both in opening their home to me and providing me with an awesome tour guide in Harper. We did tons of touristy things, ate expensive food, saw the Book of Mormon on Broadway after standing in the rain for 3 hours for tickets, and of course, ate a lot of delicious, overpriced food. December 29th, I said my goodbyes to my generous hosts and headed to JFK to meet the rest of the group. Now the real adventure was beginning! And what an adventure it's been.

I'm going to try to give an abridged version of what I've done here so far, but if you want to know more, feel free to let me know. After a long day and  a half or so of travel, we finally arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali. We stayed with our group for the first few days, until the 4th of January. Our second night we welcomed the New Year with cocacola, pineapple soda, sprite, a quick dip in the pool for some, and fireworks. It was really calm, but nice too.

We took a day to tour around the city a little bit, and on our third morning in Mali we headed off to our first village, Siby. I made my first Malian friend here, a local guy named Fama Kamara. He showed me around the hotel compound we were staying in, including the crocodile and porcupine, and we talked a lot about differences in our education systems (he's 22, and in his last year of high school), and a bunch of other stuff. It was great to be able to practice my french a bit, because as a group, we pretty much speak exclusively in english. He found out I There were also some Malians slacklining at the hotel, which was really cool to see. I had no idea that was a thing outside of the US. I tried it out, but being in a different country did nothing to improve my slacklining abilities. We also got our first taste of african dance here, with a dance in Siby that night. We all got up and gave it a shot. It seems as though the Malians really enjoyed watcing us Toubabs (as they call westerners) dance, despite most of us being pretty bad, myself included. But we all had fun, which is the important thing. Earlier in the day, we went to a natural arch near the village, which is a sacred site in their traditional religion.

The next day, we headed to Nane-keneba, the village Cherif's dad was from. Before going there though, we went and saw a waterfall, which was absolutely beautiful. After we left there, and about a 2 hour drive down bumpy, unpaved, dirt roads, we arrived in the village and were immediately surrounded by a whole bunch of kids. It was kind ly of cool, but honest mostly just pretty overwhelming. They would kind of hiss at us to get our attention, then pose for pictures. They were pretty demanding of our time and attention. It was hard because we all felt like we wanted to do something for them, because it was pretty obvious that their standard of living was so much lower than ours, but didn't know how to do so without giving them everything. I talked for a long time with Dragoess, who is a Malian who teaches in France and comes to Mali every two years to help with the program, teaching our Malian film course. We talked a lot about the infrastructure of Mali, the school systems, politics, poverty...I won't go into details about it here, but suffice it to say that Mali as a country is not doing very well. We went to another Malian dance that night, but this one was more traditional, in that they performed some dances with masks and costumes and such during it. Whenever we got up to dance, all of the small children would laugh at us, so I'm sure we looked pretty ridiculous, but to our credit, we went for it with a vengeance. The next morning we visited the school, medical clinic, and blacksmith in town, then headed back to Siby for lunch and Bamako to meet our host families.

My host family is great. They have 4 kids, who are 14, 21, 23, and 25. All the older ones, and both of the parents, work, which seems to be really uncommon here. The dad, oldest brother,  younger sister are all architects, the older sister is a civil engineer, the mom, a dentist. They're all super nice, and all speak great french, which is really nice, and surprisingly uncommon here. French is really not that widely spoken here. You will barely hear any french spoken anywhere here. When my host sisters are out with friends, they speak Bambara too, so I just stand by and observe. It's certainly interesting being somewhere where I don't speak the popular language, but I'm getting by and slowly learning some Bambara along the way. I went to a wedding the first day with my family, which was nothing like weddings here, but mostly consisted of me preparing some food and not understanding what was happening around me, as everyone only spoke in Bambara. I did, however, get my first marriage proposition from a cousin, which was interesting. He was joking around of course, but it's hard to know how to respond to that. Since then, I've had a great taxi adventure getting to Point Sud, where we're having classes, my first experience at a tailor, eaten fish with its head, fins, skin, everything intact...

I guess that's, if you can believe it, a super abridged version of life here so far. If you want me to elaborate on anything or have any questions, leave a comment, and I'll be happy to reply in my next post.

Andy: Hope your trip back to school was uneventful, and I hope you have a great winter term!
Mom and Dad: Have fun in Mexico! I'll talk to you when you get back.
1hue: Miss you guys! Hope you're having a great winter term, and I can't wait to see you all come spring term.