Bintou works at cooperative and gets increasingly hardcore...

OH MAN my body hurts! The past few days at the cooperative have been intense... but that's a good thing because it means the women are giving me more and more responsabilities. Yesterday one of the women couldnt come to work because she had hand problems (she's 80). So guess who watered all of her plots. Yep, me! Intense. I felt really honored by the fact that they put that much confidence in my abilities.

Last night, thank allah, it poured! We had to bring everything inside (were always sitting in the courtyard outside) and the roof to my house is tin, so we literally had to yell to hear each other... but it was great! All I could think about was Aminata Mariko (the lady whose land I took that morning) and what a blessing it was that she wouldn't have to come to water her land today either!

Anyway, when I came this morning, everything was uber-green and lots of the women didnt come because they didnt have to sooni ke (water) anything. I asked how I could help and they werent sure at first because they said "i te se ka sene ke" meaning 'you dont really know how to cultivate' and I was like "n be se! n be se!" (I can! I can!) I told them I wanted to learn so they showed me and then skeptically handed me the hoe. When i started mirroring what they had just done, they were pretty shocked.

"BINTOU BE SE KA SENE KE!" one woman screamed across the farm! "A BE SE!"
(Bintou can cultivate! She can!)

All the women got really excited and it was really funny. They gave me one whole plot to dig up with that hoe and MAN that was some work! I guess the women are used to it, and at first it wasnt bad -- you basically just hack away at the earth and pull up lots of roots -- but then the heat kicked in. I was dripping with sweat (even in my new cool boubou i picked up from the tailleur yesterday). By the end of the plot, my hands felt ready to fall off. Now I have 3 hugeeee blisters just waiting to be popped. yum!

I'm certainly building up some strength at this cooperative and I really have a huge appreciation for the women who are there working constantly. Its really incredible how much they do and dont complain at all.

I've also been doing lots of research about how important women are in development, so being there and talking with them first hand is a great learning experience. My bambara isnt amazing, but today and yesterday i could say and understand everything at the cooperative which was pretty huge. granted our topics of conversation were all farming related, but still... yay!

Tonight i'm going to my friends' house for dinner and theyre making gnocchi! I'm pretty excited about that. I miss western food sooo so much.

Beautiful things of the day (inspired by Annemarie) :

• bright yellow african fabrics that have birds on them
• wood carved objects
• the cool breeze you feel for 5 minutes when you cross the bridge on sweaty sweaty sotrama rides
• children with eyeliner
• avocados
• pick-up rasta dance parties
• children that come up to shake your hand and yell "bonjour madame!"
• the little 3 year old neighbor named Kadi that holds my hand and walks with me as far as I will let her
• dirt roads that are, today, mud roads (heyyyy rain!)
  
• malian greetings and cousinage
  
• 2 minutes each evening as the sun sets when everything gets this amazing orange glow and you feel like youre in a movie about africa
  

this is my new dress...

the tailleur made it for me for 7 dollars

win!

also, this is the top of my hill

sometimes when im just walking absent-mindedly i stop and look around and think 'wow, this is my life right now' and it seems pretty crazy. in the same way that its easy to take for granted the place where you live at home (you see the same familiar things everyday), im getting really used to here. but then sometimes i clear my head and im just like 'yeah... this is pretty awesome'. today i realized that when i was on the sotrama and we had to stop for 4 cows crossing the road (no biggie) and then later the sotrama broke down and half the men inside got out and pushed us all the way to a gas station. all that kind of stuff is pretty normal until you think about it in comparison to home.

also, im loving my cooperative. even though its a million miles (2 sotramas) away, its just so great. and despite the language barrier, im starting to feel like i really belong with those women. i know the routine now, i know most of their names (not easy mind you), and they all know me and get a huge kick out of my bambara. today a film crew came from UNICEF belgium to take footage of cooperative farming for a big project theyre doing in mali (not at kalikan specifically though). they were interested in talking to me since im this weird intermediary that looks like them but carries buckets of water on my head and communicates with the malian women (the unicef folks dont speak a word of bambara). it was great talking to them because i felt knowledgable enough to explain the coop and talk about the needs of the women there (from what ive learned in my interviews), like a better irrigation system, better fencing, and consistent transport to the big market.

also, if anyone happens to be watching belgian TV, look for me :)

this afternoon, i went to a free outdoor concert at the art museum and it was amaaazing. the group is Mam Sidibe and her orchestre and it was this great mix of more current malian music with a heavy traditional base. one of the dudes in the group was the best african dancer ive ever seen. he could even contort his body and still be dancing to the beat. and he could breakdance to the beat! and this old dude came out and danced a little and it was cute and then all of a sudden he did a flip! it was so willy wonka of him! lots of kids danced too... the music was very djembe oriented which i love. and the crowd was roaring and moving the whole time. anyway, it was so great im going to see them again tomorrow night with my friends at the palais de la culture. this ones not free, but hopefully its equally as fun and dancey (dancey?)!

tomorrow i have an interview with this dude at the union for farming cooperatives in mali so im pretty excited to get some big information. research is hard here, without having a computer all the time, but its going.

oh also im feeling a lot better now :)
n ka kènè

write back to my posts people! i like that!

sumaya ani typhoide tun bè ka n na, nka sisan n ka kènè

(i had malaria and typhoid, but now im healthy)

sooo yeah... just got out of 5 days at the hospital. i woke up on thursday morning feeling awful and found out a few hours later at the clinic that i had both typhoid and malaria. JUST when i was thinking i might sneak out of mali without a scratch!

this is what my experience was like (from my journal)...

five days i spent in one bed. five days horizontal. there were some good things about that room, though, like the one way window serving as a mirror to outsiders (and providing me with some light entertainment). the air conditioning became my good pal and its remote too. i got to know the inside of my head a lot better and the lengths of my imagination in desperate measures. i got better at shadow puppets and shallow dreaming. one of the nurses named moussa had a shirt accidently embroidered with the word mousso. that was really funny it made me laugh outloud alone in my empty space. bob dylan sustained me. i had a cleansing oil detox and a clearer head because of it. as moms daughter, i made lists. i practiced bambara sentences in my head. i looked up words in my french dictionary. i read l'amant. i got a plant from lobo and i put it outside so it could taste the rain. it rained. i watched the wind and rain from my one way window. my room smelled of bananas. i slept a lot. and wrote.

now im out! FREE FREE FREE! i have so much life to live! no but really, after being in one space for so long, its strange to leave and exciting. i felt like i was seeing africa again the way i did when i first got here... noticing all the bright colors and the smells and the sounds. its a lot. i have lots of things i want to do that ive been ittttching to do all week. i cant wait to get back to the cooperative. i love it there. the women are so amazing. did i mention that last tuesday when i went they gave me a whole bag full of freshly picked bissap flowers (below) and mint and citronella. bissap juice is one of the best things ever in mali and especially when its frozen. that night i went home and made my own bissap juice with mint and citronella. yum!

anyway, some of you parental types are probably still stuck on the whole malaria typhoid thing but donnnt worry im AOK. and im taking it easy for the next few days anyway because im a smart one... no african dancing while carrying water on my head in the 100+ degree weather (at least for a week or so).

peace and glucose solutions

BINTOU

a few family pictures from yesterday...

1. Me and Mamadou
2. Lala, Bintou, et Diami (Lala's mom, my sister)
3. Tell me Mamadou isnt the cutest child youve ever seen (sorry I dont know how to rotate this image)
4. Maimouna (my sister) and me

Turns out I have another sister that lives with us too. Her name is Aida. Shes been at our house for a few weeks and I thought she was just visiting because sometimes family members come to visit for a while, but turns out she lives with us. Figures.

sooo voila! proof! this is me earlier today at the fields where im doing my project. (you cant get a great view of the fields this shot bc i was near the edge) i spent a good 2 hours going back and forth from the water basins to the vegetable plots with water on my head. today i was working with/for aminata mariko - the oldest member of the cooperative. shes 80 and still she works there everyday, twice a day! these women are so strong. it took about 2 hours to do all the watering (with my help) this morning (and i can carry as much if not more than she does), so i imagine it would take about an hour more had i not been there. its so incredible how much these women work!

im on a relatively fast computer right now so im going to try to upload more photos in another post.

I went back to Sanankoroba this weekend to visit the family there and bring them some of the pictures I had printed. Even though it took wayyyy too long in the blistering heat to get there, it was really great once I arrived. Everyone was so excited to see themselves in the pictures. Most people in villages here dont have pictures of themselves, so it was pretty cool to see their reactions. A small dance party broke out too :)

Yesterday I spent a lot of time at home with my Bko family, since I feel like Ive been out a lot. I made them guacamole and, after a long hunt, found some tortilla chips. The dish was devouuuured. My host brother told Matou (my 16 year old neice) that she needs to make that so she can get a good husband. Now I want to make more food for them since they seem to like it so much. Any suggestions of things I can make that dont involve an oven?

some things

Bamako doesnt have that many billboards, but if you see one, you can be sure that it will be for one of three things: a bank, AIDS, or powdered milk. If its for AIDS it will usually just be a big ribbon that says "SIDA: pensez-y!" (AIDS: think about it!) and Im not sure how effective that is if people dont know what it is. There are also some pretty great AIDS billboards that have a picture of a condom with two fingers in it. Im also not sure how effective that is. The powdered milk ads are the best though, because despite all the cows there are, everyone here just drinks powered milk. My favorite is for this brand called Laicran. Its just this picture of this woman smiling and below her it says "Laicran: la plus belle preuve d'amour" (Laicran: the most beautiful proof of love).

The best word that weve learned in Bambara is "ka jigin" which has 3 definitions: get down, get off, give birth. Its like a Malian public service announcement and I think its more effective than the AIDS billboards.

Bintou meets Baobab and they are very happy together

or:

Bintou discovers easier way to put pictures on her blog and finds herself feeling surprisingly computer savvy. Mmm.

back in bko

just got back from the grannnnd excursion today. even though we were traveling in a huge pack (which i was dreading), it ended up being a great time. we went to segou, djenne, the dogon hills (sangha) and mopti. i looooooved the dogon hills especially. if anyone wants to come with me next time i go back...

basically the hills are these huuuge rocks that you can hike through and people live in them and the area is sooo remote and beautiful. for the most part there is no electricity, so at night you can see a bazillion stars. i slept out on the roof both nights even though it got really cold. it was soo wonderful. since i only have a few minutes left of cyber, im just going to highlight dogon country. basically, im ready to move there (sorry mom and dad). for the 3 days we were there i was at total peace and it was really perfect. one morning we got up early and went on a 5 hour long hike through the hills. there were tons of baobab trees which are the best kind of tree because theyre soooo huge and wise. you cant climb them though because there are snakes. but in dogon, every family has their own baobab and every baobab has a name! how cool is that?! malians dont even name pets here... just goes to show how great the baobab is.

another highlight of dogon country was attending a church service one night with a few other students. it was SO beautiful. it was all in the dogon language and the preacher sat among us and it was all done through song. really beautiful song. african church music...mmmm.

im in the process of trying to get some pics up from djenne and dogon (a lot, but just a few compared to how many i havent gotten around to putting up). OH ok ooooh it just finished yayyy! im going to send yall an email with the link to see my pictures because i dont really want to put them on this public blog.
hErE mogow (peace, people!)
bintou