Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This...

I’m starting to think the Van Morrison song “Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This” might be an apt refrain for my Peace Corps service. You know?:

“When it’s not always raining, there’d be days like this…. (hot days when, no matter how
hard we try, or how little we move, we just can’t stop sweating)
[When] everything falls into place, like the flick of a switch…
When you don’t need to worry… (because maybe you’ve come to terms with the creepy
crawlies in your house?)
When noone’s in a hurry… (although somehow that seems to be everyday here in Mali)
When you don’t need an answer… (or don’t have the language skills to understand the
answer given!)
When all the parts of the puzzle start to look like they fit…
When it’s nobody’s business the way that you wanna live… (or when the kids stop
peering through your screen door to follow your every move)
When people understand what I mean… (now, now let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’ll
be a while before everyone can understand my Bambara)
Oh my mama told me, there’d be days like this… (well, she didn’t really say anything
like that, but I’m sure she’ll permit me a bit of poetic license. Thanks, mom.)”


Somehow, I don’t think Van Morrison was referring to my Peace Corps service in Mali when he wrote the lyrics, but his song sure rings true after my first week at site here in Mali. Let me start by telling you about my first full day there:

Day One started off pretty normally – I choked down my overly sweet instant coffee and bread that my host mother had given me, and then enlisted her help to clean my house from top to bottom. I think it’s been a few years since anyone’s lived there (from what I can gather, the last volunteer there left 2 years ago), so there was dust and termites to high heaven. Then we went to my host family’s house for lunch. I was about three bites into my bowl of rice and sauce when one of my male family members rode into the compound on his bike and nonchalantly handed my 3 year old host sister something. I couldn’t tell what it was until she came closer, and that’s when I lost my appetite. In her hand was a dead mouse, head severed at the neck and all. She proceeded to manhandle it in it’s entirety. I don’t think a single part of it’s body went untouched. It takes a lot for me to lose my appetite, but this did it. I stopped eating and stared for a few seconds, and then remembered that since it’s Ramadan, my mother had made this meal especially for me, and that not eating it was really not an option. So I took a deep breath, looked down at my full bowl on the ground, and dug in, not stopping to look up until I was sure that I had eaten enough to satisfy my host mom. I finished, thanked my mom for the food, and went back to my house to take a nap, never stopping to question what they were going to do with the mouse.

I got about 30 minutes into my nap when my host father rode into my compound on his bike to greet me (stopping by to say hello, and really only hello, is standard and polite practice in Mali. People have often come to my door recently just to say “hi” and then leave), so I got up, when through the normal “Good afternoon! How has your day been? How are you? How is your family? And your wife? And your kids? And your people? And where are you coming from?” greeting with him, and then went back to my bed (which, I should say, is pretty wonderful. I’m not typically one to worry about where I sleep, but I decided to get a double bed made from bamboo – very sustainable – and I haven’t regretted it!). A few minutes later, I realized I wasn’t alone. I don’t know what made me look up and towards my door, but I’m glad I did, because my company sure wasn’t welcome. A cute, thin green head and forked tongue was edging around my doorframe on the other side of the room. I moved, and my new snake friend backed away. I got up, tip toed across the room, my skin crawling more and more the closer I got to it and my front door. I bolted out the door and walked rather briskly to my host families’ house to get my host father to come back and help me kill the thing! After drawing a picture of a snake in the ground and hissing at my host mother, she finally understood what I was trying to say and went to get my host father, who was out chatting with his friends. He came back, got his battering ram (really just a stick, but battering ram makes it sound so much more dramatic) and snake poison (guess this wasn’t the first time he’d done this) and came and beat my mint green friend until his tongue hung out permanently. I decided nap time was officially over and went outside to read for a while.

Later that day, after having wandered around my village for a while, I came home followed (as usual) by a gaggle of kids to take my daily bucket bath. And there again, inside my bedroom this time, was another uninvited guest on the wall. This time it was a scorpion. These scare me much less, which is rather contradictory because they can actually hurt me, so I picked up my sandal and took care of matters myself.

Every night after my shower, I go join a woman in the village who sits near the road and fries bean cakes. It’s an excuse to eat beans and sit around with people in the village. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we don’t. But she’s started letting me try to fry the dough. And boy am I bad. Hers come out nice and round and fluffy and mine look like long, deformed aliens. Whoops. But after this and precisely at 7pm, I head to my host families’ house and wait and watch the stars for the 30 minutes it takes them to complete their Ramadan prayers. The starts out here are amazing. The Milky Way is so bright! And the other night, there was heat lightning, and it was a great show. Almost like fireworks, but without the colors or the smoke or the loud booming. We eat dinner, and then sit around for a while and drink tea. Again, sometimes we talk. Sometimes, we don’t. It doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other to them, which is nice.
But the real reason I’m mentioning this is because on the first night, I got fried rice and meat for my dinner, which was really exciting. Meat is really expensive in country, so I was thrilled to be served it. It was cut in really small pieces and was really tender, so I ate my fair share. And then the next night I got meat again, which I didn’t think was possible or even affordable! And then it occurred to me…they probably weren’t paying for the meat. That mouse I saw in my host sister’s hand wasn’t a child’s toy. It was dinner. I asked my host father and much to my chagrin, my suspicions were confirmed. I had just dined on mice and enjoyed it.


I realized later, after thinking about the critters, that while their presence in my house does make me uncomfortable, they’re not the real reason I get so scared. It’s because I don’t feel like I have the language skills to accurately describe my problem to anyone around me who could help me. Sand drawings and hissing got the point across, but it’s no confidence booster to have to use gestures to describe something as simple as a snake. And not only can I not communicate precisely what’s on my mind, but I am completely ignorant of the emergency response system in place in this country. And frankly, using the term “emergency response system” is almost a joke, because one doesn’t exist. It’s unnerving to think that something could happen and nobody would know what I’m saying. Which isn’t even entirely true because I do speak some Bambara, and there are people in village who speak French, so I am never completely unable to communicate. And while a formal ERS doesn’t exist, I’m not encountering anything that Malians have never seen before. They know how to deal with creepy crawlies and other worries, it’s just that their system doesn’t look or work anything like the one I’m used to.
This first week was a good wake up call for me. It’s been a while since the Rotary Club dropped me off in France, and I think I’d forgotten how hard it is to integrate into a place where you don’t speak the language. I’m a few years older, and I’d like to think I’m a bit wiser now, so I’m taking it in stride. I’ve done this before, but that doesn’t mean that a day hasn’t passed when I didn’t wonder whether I really wanted to be here. I think it’s good to question my choice, though, because it reminds me of the bigger motives I have for being here. A well-worn PCV I met in Madagascar told me that you had to have personal reasons for being in PC, and I think she meant that you couldn’t do it only because you wanted to be here for other people. According to her, there had to be another motivating factor, and I’m starting to think she’s right.
It’s nice to have other Americans around, too. In fact, my teammate and I (she lives 5k away from me) biked 20k the other day to join in the Independence Day festivities (September 22 marks Mali’s independence from France) in a neighboring town. And now I’m in our regional capital enjoying a wider variety of foods than those I’m eating in village, as well as the company of other Americans. I think I’ll probably be able to make it out of site every two weeks or so, and more frequently as the holidays approach.
Keep the e-mails and updates coming from the US, it’s great to hear from everyone!