Scratch That...

Scratch everything I told you about having a routine, or a daily schedule. I think the best way to recap my last few weeks is chronologically, so here goes:

I went back to site two Mondays ago, and spent Monday to Thursday uneventfully.

Thursday -- a friend of mine biked the 70k from her site to mine. I met her about 50k along the way, and we ate lunch and walked around one of my local market towns before deciding to head back to my site. My village wouldn’t stop talking about how crazy she was to have biked all the way from her town to mine. They wondered why she just didn’t take a car. We tried to explain that, since we have nothing else to do at site, biking 70k isn’t such a bad thing to do. Lots of conversations started between my villagers about whether they or their friends could have done the same thing. The general consensus was that no Malian could have biked all that way. They also don’t have brand new American-made TREK bikes like we do. Their bikes don’t even have gears. They ride single speed rickety bikes everywhere they go.

Friday – My friend and I decided to set off again on our brand new shiny bikes to try and find waterfalls that we’d heard about. Who knew there were waterfalls in Mali? And I’m lucky enough to have some of them about 10k from my site! On the way out to the falls, we decided to stop at the school in my town and greet the teachers. They all speak French and have been a huge help for me. I’ve started secretly calling my language tutor who’s also the director of my school, my cultural/moral compass. They, and he especially, are great. And once again, they didn’t fail us. When we rolled up on our bikes and told them where we were going, they suggested stopping in at the school near the falls and asking the director to show us the road to the falls. So we biked to the school (which is rather picturesque, I might add. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures) and found the director, who seemed to be in the middle of class. But this didn’t seem to matter, because he dropped everything, greeted us, made his entire class of about 40-50 little faces stand up and greet us in their extremely stiff and awkward French greeting. For some reason around here it’s polite to fold your arms across your chest and bow while saying “Bonjour, Madame/Monsieur”. It just makes the kids look funny and it’s weird to have kids that I know don’t speak French greeting me this way. In any event, the director greeted us and after going through the normal runaround of how’syourfamilyandyourhealthandthefolksinyourvillageandyourfamilyanddidyousleepwellandyourhealthandyourkids?, we explained why we’d come and where we wanted to go. Turns out he had worked with Peace Corps volunteers in the past and was happy to help us. Not only did he show us the route, but he sent us with our own personal guide. He walked into the 6th grade class and asked who could take us to the falls. The prereqs were simple: the kid had to be unphased by the sight of two goofy Americans, and the kid needed a bike. The director ended up pulling a 12/13 year old boy out of class and telling him to show us the way. We didn’t realize it at first, but we’d landed on a gold mine. First, this kid was adorable in ways American kids just can’t ever hope to be. Our genes will just never make us that cute. We set off on our bikes and he chattered the whole way to the falls. I’m not sure whether or not he realized that we only caught about ½ about what he said, but he just kept going. We thought he’d just drop us off there and go back, but after some confusion (he didn’t speak French), we realized that he was afraid we’d get lost if we tried to go back by ourselves, so he decided to stay. I initially thought he was trying to avoid going back to class, but since it was already noon, class had ended for lunch, so he was here on his own time. He joined us for some homemade spaghetti and tomato sauce and fresh cucumbers and dressing, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy them. Most Malians look at American food and pick at it politely instead of actually eating it. This kid sucked it all down. After eating, we spent an hour or two enjoying the mist coming off the falls and the view – they’re no Victoria falls, but they’re not bad for some backyard waterfalls a few hundred kilometers south of the Sahel.

Saturday – We decided that since my friend was leaving on Sunday for another marathon bike ride home, we would do absolutely nothing. And so we rode and took some pictures (below) of both the paved road to my site and the footpath that goes from there. Then we came home and took a nap. We woke up briefly when one of my neighbors came to the door to greet, and we ate some beans that my host mom had made us for lunch. And then we went back to sleep. Another tough day on the job.

Sunday – We left my village at about 6:30am to start the ride north to my friend’s site. I rode the 20k with her again to the local market town, and we got a lavish breakfast of a fried egg sandwich on a baguette and instant coffee. And then we took off in our separate directions. I went home and stopped by my language teacher’s house and spent the rest of the day “chatting” and drinking tea, Mali style.

Monday – As I think I’ve mentioned before, market is on Mondays in a neighboring town. This town also happens to have the main health center for our village, so I’ve started stopping by there and spending time talking to them and watching their activities before going to market. This particular Monday, I found my two matrons (midwives), including my homologue, there at the maternité (women’s ward?, although ward makes it sound like something more than the three rooms it really is) learning what there is to learn about prenatal consultations and baby weighings. The eventual goal is to have these two women, who spent time last year and earlier this year becoming trained in First Aid and midwivery (is that even a word?) skills, become competent and confident enough to start working full time at the maternité in our village. We spent the morning at the clinic talking to pregnant women and mothers who’d come in to weigh their babies.

Wednesday – I biked out to another market in a neighboring village, and did my shopping and then the fun started on my way back. Certain Malians (lots of times they’re men, but not always) have a way of tailing you when biking. I’ll pass them as we’re riding along, and then instead of giving me the American-expected amount of room behind, they’ll bike as hard and fast as possible to be right up on my rear wheel. I used to think this was annoying and do nothing about it, but now I think it’s annoying and have turned it into a game. Unfortunately, I lost at my own game this time. I guess I had some extra energy, so when the man behind me started tailing me, I decided to start biking faster and faster to see if he would keep up. And he was doing a pretty darn job considering that his bike was probably about 10years older than mine. But here’s the thing to understand – we weren’t biking on pavement anymore. I keep forgetting that Dorothy left Kansas a while ago and perhaps should think about changing her actions to fit the circumstances (like biking slower on unpaved footpaths). The view from the path to my site is beautiful (see photo below). The path itself is anything but beautiful. At it’s best, it’s wide enough for a small car, but it narrows several times to be just wide enough for a bike and a moto to pass semi-safely. And now since it’s rainy season, it’s in such bad condition that there are parts where the rideable path narrows to the width of a bike tire. And these parts when it narrows happen to be in the middle of rice paddies, where the tall grass lined path is the only elevated thing around. The ground drops off into dirty, dirty water right on the other side of these grasses. It’s pretty because banana trees and other palms grow there, but every time I ride by, I pray not to fall in so I don’t contract the various skin diseases that I’m sure are just waiting below to feast on my unacclimated American skin. So where does this leave me and my biking companion? Well, we were riding along at a pretty good clip, and we entered into one of these straightaways. I didn’t do much in the way of slowing down, and next thing I knew, I had ridden too close to the edge, and was launched off my bike, through the grasses, and into the brown water below. Somehow, I landed facing uphill and the first thing I could think after I stopped laughing was getmeoutofhere,getmeoutofhere,getmeoutofhere. My “competition” stopped and pulled me out and asked if I was ok. Then he proceeded to remind me that this path was really bad, and that I shouldn’t ride so fast. Thanks, buddy. So we picked all the stickers off my clothes, and rode home slowly, with him on my tail the whole way. I immediately took a bath when I got home.
That night at about 6, as I was about to go join my bean-frying friend, a woman walked into my compound and told me and my homologue that there was a woman going into labor and that we needed to come. We walked into the kerosene lamp-lit room to find this woman lying on a blue camping tarp surrounded by a few medical tools in an otherwise empty room. We pulled up chairs and stools and buckled down for the long haul. At 7:30, my host mom came by and told me I had to come for dinner, so I ate and then went back to the maternité. Nothing had happened. The women were tapping on her belly, and I think they put some kind of traditional suave on her to induce her labor, perhaps? Still nothing. At one point, food arrived for the women, and they took a break and went outside to eat their rice and sauce and toh. I sat there and watched this woman, who was clearly in pain. Then they came back and we sat around some more. And then, out of the blue, one of the older women said to me, “I hear you fell off your bike today”. It turns out that it was her son who’d been tailing me that afternoon when I fell into the rice paddy! I had thought the whole village might know about the incident, and here was proof that, in the land of big families, word travels fast. The only thing I could do was laugh and confirm the details of the story as she told the other women in the room. 10:30 rolled around, and still nothing had happened, so I decided that it was way past my bedtime. I excused myself, and went back home to go to bed.

Thursday – The next morning, I woke up and walked over to the maternité again and found that they’d closed up shop. My neighbors told me that the women had left last night and taken the pregnant woman to our health center 5k away. On moto. So I went home and had breakfast. Later that morning, I biked to the health center to hang out with the folks there, and they told me that the woman had come the night before and they’d called the ambulance to take her to the regional hospital 30k away. Supposedly she’d needed a C-section and they were the only ones who could do it. But here’s the cool thing: in Mali, if the doctor at the local health center thinks a woman needs a C-section, he can call an ambulance and refer her to the local hospital. And if it turns out that she actually gets the operation, everything – from the ambulance ride to the operation, is FREE. From what I understand, someone a while back realized that too many women were dying because the cost of the ambulance and the operation were prohibitively expensive. So now there’s a fund set up to pay for these expenses, and supposedly the maternal mortality rate has plummeted. What a good idea.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday passed rather uneventfully. I rode 30k to get free internet on Friday, had my first house guests on Saturday, and went to the fields to help my family pick peanuts off the plant on Sunday.

Monday – On Monday, we went back to the health center (CSCOM) in the neighboring village and then went to market. On the way back, I stopped in at the doctor’s house to chat and eat lunch, and walked into the middle of a conversation about the level of education of women. My doctor was talking to two students who just graduated high school and are on their way to the one Malian University (yes, they told me there’s only 1 university in this whole country. Yikes) in Bamako next month to start classes. The female wants to get a four year degree in secretarial management, and the boy wants to get a law degree. They were sitting and making tea with my doctor, who was trying to convince the girl that she shouldn’t go to university because if she did, no man would want to marry her. Yes, I wrote that correctly: women shouldn’t be educated because no man wants a wife who is more educated than he is. WWWWHHHAAATTT? This young (I think the doctor is about 30-35), educated man is trying to discourage a bright, aspiring young woman from getting an education because of concerns about her future mate? Wow. I told him that I absolutely positively did not agree, and that there were plenty of men who would marry her if she chose to be educated. Furthermore, this doctor friend of mine has a habit of calling Africa “l’enfer” (hell) and constantly reminding me about how America is paradise. I told him that there was no way Mali was ever going to be developed if it didn’t encourage its young people (BOTH men and women) to get educations. A country needs both sexes to be able to make decisions. But he didn’t agree. I was fuming. I went back to site for my language-turned-culture lesson and asked my tutor if everyone in Mali thought this. He assured me that, no, this was not a commonly held belief and that this poor girl would be able to complete her education AND get married. There is hope for Mali.

There are pictures to come, I promise.