ba (aka jiffy), the 2nd youngest child at the coulibaly house. last trip he was petrified of me and his cousins had great fun putting him in my lap and watching him scream. this time he was always around wanting to play or hang out or snuggle. a terror and a sweet kid at the same time. he was always wanting to see my photos and look at my family and friends (and see what else he could get his hands on in our room or see what other trouble he could find). here he is practicing his karate.
Posted by Hello

a woman at the compound where the woman who did all of my bazin dying lives. bazin is the white cotton which is dyed by collectives of women in the markets or in neighborhoods. it is then made into all of the really fancy clothes in mali. djeneba, a friend of sidy's, did some nice work for me to help create some clothes for me, calabash and my folks (merry christmas mom and dad).
Posted by Hello

pickup soccer, malian style. the kid in the blue shirt is adama, one of seydou's nephews and one of the 20 or so kids that live in the compound i stayed in. despite repeated requests to jump into a game, i stayed on the sidelines . . .
Posted by Hello

a sotrama (from society du transportation mali or something like that. these are the private public transportation vehicles for most bamakois. these are owned and run by private individuals who hire drivers and prantigis (apprentices - the guys who hang out the side door and holler out where the sotrama is going and collect your cash). but they run on set routes and have set fares and i think are regulated by some aspect of malian government. anyway, for 100 cfa you can go to the market or for 125 cfa you can go all the way downtown from where i lived.
Posted by Hello

more kids, these guys were some of the 50-150 in attendance at each of the dance classes i took. always a fun thing to have 100 or so onlookers watching you dance. anyway, they were obviously excited by my great dancing ;) or maybe it was just that they could see themselves on the screen of my video camera. great invention that, allowing the screen to flip so the photo subject can see themselves. always sets off a great scream of joy from the kids. it is really funny to watch the video when i flip the screen and the kids realize what's going on.
Posted by Hello

some kids in kolokani, rokia traore's village, watching the filming of the 1 giant leap sequel.
Posted by Hello

culture shocking

so i've been back in the states now for 36 hours or so. and i'm still in culture shock. i think it is unavoidable, and not sure exactly what triggers it; the cold, the snow on the ground, driving, the amount of food on the plates at restaurants, the prices of everything, the supermarket, the number of white people, the lack of kids running around everywhere, the tv in the house, the fact that i can actually drink the water from the tap (not that i have yet - some things are just habit and harder to break), seeing pictures of the tsunami, seeing the amount of crap i have in my room, . . . . . . .
the list goes on.
needless to say, mali and boston are 2 completely different worlds.
and the transition between those worlds is not an easy thing. i think i was fooled a little bit on the trip over and my transition into mali, as it went pretty smoothly this time. no major disease episodes, no major problems with food or language. my stomach was able to better handle some things (watching animals being slaughtered or prepared for eating, open toilets, open sewers, etc) and i was just less shocked by things and my senses were not as on high alert as they had been last trip. the smells and sights and sounds while still there and still noticed were not accompanied by alerts and shock like they might have been before.
i'm trying to download something so i can upload pictures, so i'm going to cut this post short and get that up and then write more. as you can tell from the time post on this blog, my body is still adjusting and i am feeling like i have to write right now.
e

back again in the ussa!

i'm back in the states and starting my readjustment process, including relearning how to type on an english qwerty keyboqrd. as you can see, it'll take a bit of time.
i'll be around at 617 776 2857 until i get my cell phone back up and running
more later
e

ahh mali

i can't believe it's time to go. i've confirmed my flight out of here on friday, so am counting down the hours. mali is great. i don't know if that is cause i know i can leave at almost any time, or really cause it is a wonderful country with wonderful people or some combination of the two, but i will miss it when i leave.
taking care of final details, getting in final dance classes, going to a final ceremony, etc etc. although it has been 'cold' here lately, with temps dropping into the 50s at night, and i have been putting on long sleeves, i'm quite scared to come back to the lovely boston winter. just in time for it to really start being nasty. although i am also actually looking forward to being home.
in these last couple of days, i have started carrying my camera and video camera with me. normally i don't carry either cause they are nice expensive targets for theft and it is also culturally quite rude to take photos without asking and video the same. the video is great cause it also takes stills, and i can show people the stills right away. amazing. they love it! and i love it cause i get great photos!
anyway, i am off home to finish up some stuff there, and will probably next post from boston allah so na ma (inshallah/god willing)
e

bad day to be a chicken . . .

new years eve is a bad day to be a chicken in mali. everyone prepares chicken with onion, carrot and a couple other veggies (peppers and ?) on new years. the coulibaly's went out and bought 10! everywhere there were chickens being killed (cut the throat) and defeathered, either straight away or after being soaked in hot water for a bit. then the women butcher the chickens and start em cookin.
ba and i got the new years started by getting stuffed with this fresh chicken at the coulibaly house. full and in new outfits (ba in new 'american' jeans, shirt, hat and me in a bogolan boubou and hat) we got in our rented taxi and started out. picked up allison and sidy and headed across the river to visit abdoul doumbia and one of sidy's friends, chris. got to abdoul's house, found a bunch of toubabs drinking beer and hanging out. sekou camara was also there, which was nice to see him. we hung out for a while, then i found out abdoul was home, so i found him, also good to see him again. sidy made the mistake of inviting our taxi driver into the house here, and he was part of our party for the rest of the night. not really a bad thing, just kind of wierd. here we are, four friends, with this tag along guy. but who are we to deny him a happy new year party as well?
we then headed over to ramata diakite's house, as she had invited me over earlier in the day. we hung out a bit with her and her husband, and again, got fed lots and lots of chicken. this was also good stuff, but it was farafin chicken, not the toubab chicken we had at the coulibaly's. the difference will be apparent shortly. toubab chicken are like toubabs, well fed (maybe over fed), farafin chickens are like africans (farafin), fed.
this was the awkward part with the taxi man. ramata's husband basically told him to stay with the car, but he came in and sat down and ate with us anyway. too funny. also funny was ramata's guardian (house guardian) trying to take all of our picture. i don't think the guy had ever held a camera, much less a crazy one like mine with parts sticking out all over the place. i explained how to take a picture, he said he understood, then he looked in the viewfinder and pointed the camera at the ceiling. nice. we'll see how the picture turns out, but it was too funny. midnight struck as we were at ramata's house, and firecrackers were going off all over the place. more about them later.
we then headed out to one of the free concerts happening on new years. all the clubs were charging ridiculous prices, fine for a toubab alone, but not happening for a toubab with 2 malians in tow. prices started at 5000 cfa (10 bucks) and went up from there. i actually don't think there was admission under 20 bucks anywhere that night. this in a country where 70 percent of the people live on less than a dollar a day. a well paid functionary can bring home somewhere around 2000 dollars a year, but the artists i hang out with are making about 20 - 40 bucks a month from ceremonies. so how they got away with charging this stuff is beyond me, except that there are lots of toubabs and mali's small middle class must all come out on new years.
so we headed for the tower of africa, where ORTM, the malian tv station was having one of their 3 live shows. big crowd, artists lip synching to recordings which sometimes worked, and lots of firecrackers. (mom stop reading) it was a little unnerving, a little exciting. i think we were the only 2 toubabs in the crowd. anyway, we stuck around for a little bit, but we bailed after a particularly large explosion close by. allison was pretty unnerved, and that's probably good, cause i would have been happy to stick around, which was probably not the best idea. anyway, we headed out, looking for a cabine telepone to call moussa and joh and find out what was up with them. we couldn't get ahold of moussa, but found joh at his mother's house with his toubab crew. we found them, and again were stuffed with tasty chicken. i had enough, my stomach was about to burst. so we just chilled at joh's for a sec, letting our bellies expand for the chicken.
we then headed out to try and find a spot to dance the rest of the night away. oumou sangare had finished her concert, and by the time we got to the paradise club, it was after 4 am. so we bailed, leaving joh and crew to dance it up for us. made it home by 5 and got a good couple hours of sleep before the new year officially started . . .