the last few days have been craaazy. time is disappearing!!! i went to this awesome free concert a few nights ago... it was a mix of slam poetry, traditional malian music, and griot! soooo cool! there were probably 10 or 15 people on stage (including a few white dudes) and everyone was soooo talented, from the griot who sang to this one slam poet/rapper dude who slammed in bambara, to a sweet beat boxer who could mimick a sax solo while it was being played (!) to the most amazing kora player. djembe player, balafon (tradish malian xylophone), calabash, everything. im really going to miss the music scene in mali.

tonight theres im going to a big outdoor concert that my friends and i have been excited about for a couple weeks now.

tomorrow our rasta friends' (from my hill) band is playing a bob marley tribute show because...

may 11 is bob marleys birthday! ahhhh! thats a really big deal here and everyone for the past like, 2 months has been asking 'so, what are you doing for may 11?' appently there are lots of festivities at the cultural spaces around bamako, so hopefully ill be doing some dancing...

anyway, i dont know what to do about this whole time disappearing thing. the worst part is how much worrrrk i have to do! i had my isp presentation today and it went just marvelously. now i have to finish the paper which is quite a feat. ive learned so much from my work at the cooperative, and plan on going next week even when the paper is done. thinking about leaving makes me sad.

oh guess, what? i was in a car accident yesterday. realllllly not a biggie, it was in the sotrama. we hit another sotrama that was next to us and it made a big ol crash and their mirror came off, but it didnt even shake me up at all. i just got up and left the sotrama and walked the rest of the way to my destination. it was so anticlimactic, i forgot to tell anyone about it (so you all are the first to hear!)

sporradic jump-rope games with street girls (m+d, bring some long jump ropes)
little Mamadou cuddling with his 7 foot uncle (my brother), Sa
really really dirty money
patchwork fabrics
first-call-to-prayer-hour bird songs hoot hoo hoo hoooot hoot
boys that help grandmothers in gardens and sing the whole time
barefeet covered in mud
photographs taken by people who have never held a camera

BT

its raining!!! ahh!!! its rainnnnning!
the rainy season isnt supposed to start until june! good ol' global dubs.
ahhh i have so much paper writing to do ahhh help me!

a nice image

i really should be writing this 20 page paper thingy buuuut yesterday was the best day ever so let me leave you with this image:

dancing on the side of my hill to the djembe beats of my new rasta friend Yege (who is apparently an internationally known drummer) and the beautiful music of the kora, with my friends from all over west africa (and my american friend aida), barefoot in my yellow dress, at sunset (with a breeze), looking out over bamako, under the mango trees

a little external celebration of life in da afrIKa
(reminded me of the last scene in "black orpheus")

i dont wanna gooooo

because tim wants to procrastinate...

heres a picture of Lala (my neice, left), me (the white chick), kadi (the adoooorable next door neighbor that likes to hold my hand and walk with me, right) and aminata (the maid who is wonderful and has the best laugh, standing)

so yesterday, my phone rings and guess who it is? (you wont guess) nikki stennes! my wash u friend studying in scotland at the moment and the worlds greatest weather woman. it was super exciting to be talking to her (ohhh technology!) andddd she told me her mom reads my blogs which is kind of exciting... shout out to Mrs. Stennes!

anywho, i worked at the coop for 4 hours yesterday and had some really solid interviews with the women. i think my research is coming a long just lovelyly. then theres the whole paper writing thing... well see how that goes. i was going to do that now but tim wants to procrastinate and all...

malians really love mayonnaise too much. who knew? very popular: mayonnaise sandwich. there are these really horrible billboards for mayonnaise that say the brand at the top and then have a picture with 1. a salad 2. a dead fish with its eyes missing (on the salad) 3. 5 large globs of mayonnaise on top of it all. its really the most unappetizing thing ive ever seen and somehow several mayonnaise brands have chosen to use the same image. yuck.

beautiful things of the day:

1. people that hold strangers' children on their laps on the sotrama because the stranger has more than one (not uncommon)


2. little bright red furry spiders that emerge in the garden after it rains


3. adiaratou's (woman at the cooperative) laugh when i say something surprisingly complex in bambara


4. the song: dunuya sira ka gelen by my rasta friend ablo


5. koran classes held under street lamps


6. women that get down on their knees to pray in the middle of the garden in 110 degree heat


7. fire hydrants that arent near anything even remotely flammable


8. refrigerated mangoes


9. oranges squeezed into orange juice right before your eyes

i want to upload pictures from the cooperative but this computer is being a butt.

mom- i cant believe tomorrow is your bday... can we skype video chat? perhaps in the morning? call and we can make a date.

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!